by Roxie Noir
“What?” I ask, even though I’m dizzy with panic.
“It’s noth—”
The plane drops out of the clouds all at once, like a curtain’s been lifted in front of us, and the mountains come into sharp relief.
I thought we were twenty thousand feet up. We’re not.
We’re way, way lower and losing altitude fast.
I’m frozen. I don’t do or say anything, just goggle out the plane’s windshield at the craggy mountains below us so much closer than they should be.
This is another asshole joke of Wilder’s, a voice whispers in the very back of my brain.
He’s trying to get you to cry, freak out, do something else embarrassing so he can go back to Solaris and tell all his douchebag bros about it, because you know that people never change, and you were stupid to take this deal in the first place.
That’s not it. I don’t know how I know but I do, because there’s a cold fear in Wilder’s eyes that matches the fear in the pit of my stomach that tells me this isn’t a joke, this is real as hell and bad.
“What’s going on?” I scream-shout, way too loud, over the roar.
“Are you—”
The engine cuts off before Wilder can finish his sentence.
“—Get buckled!” he shouts, as if I ever unbuckled myself on this tiny, psychopath-piloted plane, but I tighten my harness anyway, hands shaking, until it’s so snug I can barely breathe.
“The engine went down, and I don’t know why,” Wilder shouts. “Hold on and fucking pray or something.”
As if he has to tell me. I’m hyperventilating, eyes squeezed shut, hands clamped on my seat and head down. In the sudden quiet I can hear myself sobbing, my ears still popping like mad, my whole body shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s me or the plane doing it.
I’m sorry, I think over and over again, the only thought I can muster as faces flash through my head: my parents, my little brother, my long-dead grandfather, my best friend from graduate school, my mentor who set up this arctic gig for me in the first place.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I don’t know what I’m sorry for but it’s all I can think as we careen toward the snowy ground, the wings creaking and the wind roaring against us louder and louder and then Wilder is shouting and I’m screaming and sobbing that I’m sorry—
Chapter Seven
Wilder
I’m swimming. Snorkeling, the water around me this perfect, clear blue as I skim over the top of a coral reef, colorful fish darting back and forth below me.
There’s an octopus. A lionfish, a shark, a school of colorful blue-and-yellow fish and an eel and I’m just entranced by the beautiful, colorful bounty that nature has to offer.
I dive. I need to see it, need to be closer so I dive and it’s only as I do that I realize I didn’t go down, the water came up. Somehow the water rose above my head and the coral reef and the fish are all forgotten as I look up through the scratched plastic of my goggles and realize that I’m here, but the water is still rising, higher and higher over my head and I think wasn’t I supposed to float?
I kick up, hard as I can. I might be wearing fins and I might not, I can’t tell, and I sure can’t look down because down is bad, up is good, up is where I’m going. I kick again and again, hard as I can.
My lungs scream. My legs scream. I’ve forgotten how to swim and now my hands are just claws, like I can grab the water above me and wrestle myself up, feet no longer moving in any kind of rhythm except for the most desperate one, fluttering and dancing and I’m almost there, to the ever-rising surface as the air leaves my lungs in a rush, bubbling upward and it’s only a couple of feet, if it would just stop moving I could get there—
I wake myself up gasping, choking, chest tight in my harness. Sweat is dripping into my mouth as I open my eyes, look around frantically, tear the harness off and rub my face between my gloved hands.
I gulp air like a madman. I twist and struggle against my seat, the very last thing you’re supposed to do at a time like this because for all I know my neck and back and skull could all be cracked wide open and I’d have no idea, but it’s impossible for me to do what I should right now and all that’s available is what I have to do.
I finally find the latches on my harness, release them, get myself out of the straps and half-fall into the empty passenger side seat. Everything hurts, all at once, and even though I register that, the adrenaline galloping through my veins makes that fact just another one in the whirlwind racing through my head:
This hurts what happened where are we the plane crashed I crashed the plane there’s snow over the windshield is anything broken are we hanging over a cliff like we’re in a movie what about mountain lions are there mountain lions will the plane explode can the plane explode is Imogen okay
fuck
Imogen
fuck
I haul myself up, feet on the passenger door because the plane’s at a fifteen-degree angle, port side over starboard side, and I finally see Imogen.
She’s slumped against her own harness, head hanging down, her wavy brown hair half out of her bun and rioting around her face, her arms dangling at odd angles even though her feet and legs are perfectly prim and straight, in front of her, bent at a ninety-degree angle like she’s patiently sitting at a chamber music concert.
“Imogen,” I say, my breath puffing out in front of me.
It got cold fast.
She doesn’t respond.
“Imogen!” I shout, but nothing happens. It feels like the small space and the cold suck my voice away into nothingness, a strand of hair floating around Imogen’s head as she hangs there, limp, and all I can think is oh my God I killed her, I fucking killed her.
I climb over the angled seats. I kneel next to her, my own limbs not totally trustworthy, the tilt of the plane threatening to topple me onto her, but I manage myself, brace my feet, take off a glove and put my hand on her neck.
Still warm. Blazing, even, her skin hot under my frozen fingers and it only takes me a second to find the desperate thump of her jugular, strong and reassuring as anything.
I exhale in relief, knee braced against her seat, the wisps of her hair tickling my wrist as I leave my hand there for a long moment, reveling in the reassurance that I haven’t killed anyone. Not today, at least, and not Imogen, not yet.
I slump into the other seat next to her. There are a thousand things that I should be doing, a thousand checks I should be making. I should be uselessly radioing for help and transmitting coordinates and checking our supplies and scouting out our location, but right now, just for now, I sit in the other seat and look at Imogen, unconscious, her head back now and her lips parted, glasses off.
I’m shaking. I put my glove back on, still shaking because I just crashed a plane in the middle of the Canadian nowhere and there’s no training for this, no guidebook, no clear path to survival at all.
I don’t know how long I sit in that seat. I don’t think it’s very long, but I have no gauge, no way to tell besides the sunlight outside the snow-covered windows of the plane, but given that we’ve had full cloud cover all day, that’s nearly meaningless.
My head feels like a rock tumbler of thoughts, all crashing around, colliding into each other with gems like you need to find food next to Dad is going to be so pissed about the plane to it’s like that snow fort you were always trying to build.
Finally, I get up. I don’t think anything’s broken, now that the glut of adrenaline has passed and I can feel pain properly. I’ve broken plenty of things — I grew up skiing, played football, then joined the military, I know broken bones — and nothing feels broken now.
The pilot’s side door is impossible to open, either bent or too covered in snow, but I manage to push out the cargo door on the rear port side to a small avalanche of white powder and I get out of the plane at last, heaving a deep sigh because while I’m not claustrophobic it’s easy to get that way when you think you might be trapped in a Cessna 172.
And I look around.
There’s nothing.
That’s not true. We’re in the middle of craggy mountains, steel-colored granite peeking through the snowy mountain tops, the green-black of fir trees down below, the sky above another gray swirl that makes it hard to tell where the sky ends and the snow-covered earth begins.
The plane is down, the nose buried in a couple feet of snow, the port side wing sticking up and the starboard side wing buried under a mound where it plowed under. From the angle of the plane it’s probably bent or broken anyway from the crash landing, not that it matters because the plane is never leaving this spot again.
It’s freezing. It’s windy. It’s impossible to tell the time of day, because the altitude and the cloud cover means that day looks the same from morning until night which means I have no idea how much light is left. For the first time, I realize that the plane’s not yellow because it’s a fun, flashy color, it’s yellow because if it were white it would blend in perfectly with the snow and no one would ever find it.
But when I said that there was nothing, I meant there’s no civilization. Besides the airplane behind me there’s no sign that humans have ever existed, that we ever crawled our way out of the mud and onto land. It could be 2500 BC for all I know. We could have flown back in time.
Imogen and I are alone, together, in the deep wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, battered and bruised, one of us still unconscious.
Despite everything, my stomach flips over at the thought. Yesterday I really thought I’d never see her again, and I was fine with it. Happy about it. I still thought about her a hundred times more than I should have, for a girl I hadn’t seen in ten years, and every single time I did there was the same mix of anger and guilt, revulsion and lust.
I could leave while she’s unconscious, I think. No one would ever know. Even if they found her body somehow, no one would know that I left her here while she was alive.
Just grab your emergency supplies and start walking downhill.
I don’t. I can do bad, heartless things, but not that bad and not that heartless.
I heave the cargo door open again, shove my way past the luggage that tumbled everywhere when the plane went down. It’s probably full of broken shit, glass tumblers and fancy microscopes and other science equipment, I don’t fucking know what.
I shut the door, unsteadily move forward. Imogen hasn’t moved, but there’s a piece of hair floating in front of her face that moves with every breath, so I know she’s still alive, head leaning back against the seat.
Slowly, I pick her glasses up from the floor where they flew, miraculously unbroken. I fold them, put them in her lap. She doesn’t move, and for the first time in years and years, I study her face, no thick frames and lenses between us.
I remember the first time I saw her like this, without them. We were in the alley behind the movie theater where she worked in high school, September, warm enough that we weren’t wearing coats. She’d just gotten off work at midnight, still smelling of buttered popcorn and cleaning product, looking at me suspiciously, like she was surprised I’d shown up.
Imogen had asked me if it was a joke. I told her it wasn’t. Not then.
The strand of hair floats up and down, in front of her face, in time with her breath.
Chapter Eight
Imogen
There’s a light.
We’re about to crash and then suddenly there’s a light, with no time in between the two things, just one scene turning into another like a switch has been flipped.
I stare at it, uncomprehending. We’re not moving any more, at least, or at least I think we’re not moving. Maybe we’re moving and I can’t tell, or maybe I’d dead and heaven is this blurry flickering blue-orange light and toes I can’t feel.
Fingers I can’t feel, either, but I can feel my head and the rest of my body and it all hurts like hell, half stiff and half sore and all bad.
I move my fingers. I realize that my hands are in gloves that I don’t remember putting on, and I flex them, knock them clumsily into something. My glasses, neatly folded from the feel of it, and without thinking I put them on and bring everything into sharp relief at last.
I’m still in the plane. Still in the seat, slumped half against it and half against the window, the orange-blue light only a reflection in the windshield and mirror.
All my joints move. If I’m dead at least it’s not that bad. It hurts but it’s not that bad and I shove my mittened hands over my hair, wonder if in the moments before the plane crashed I put on mittens and just don’t remember it. I don’t even know if I had mittens, I’m not usually the mittens type but it’s true that they’re more efficient than gloves at storing heat, just less dexterous.
“You awake?” Wilder’s voice asks behind me.
I guess he survived too. I shouldn’t wish otherwise. It’s not nice and I’m a nice person, not someone who wishes death on other people, but the prospect of spending even more time alone with the one person I’m fairly sure is my own personal hell is daunting.
I flail at the release on my harness until it comes undone, pull it away from myself, joints protesting though I don’t think anything is broken. I turn in the seat and finally look at him, sitting on a suitcase on the floor of the plane, two feet behind me.
The whole plane cabin is at a slight tilt, making me lean to one side. Wilder’s got a tiny camp stove flaring in front of him, propped up so it’s level. That’s the light I saw reflected a moment ago.
My lips are chapped, my mouth dry.
“We’re gonna die of carbon monoxide poisoning,” I tell him.
There’s a tiny pot sitting on the tiny stove, obviously all part of some emergency kit he’s got. Wilder doesn’t respond to me, just rips open a package and peers inside.
I’m still slightly woozy, dizzy, having a hard time keeping my balance even seated in this little plane.
“Do you really want to survive a plane crash,” I say, and swallow, squeezing my eyes shut. “Only to die of a totally preventable—”
“I propped the back door open,” he says without looking at me.
I glance back. He’s right, the door to the cargo area is propped up with a rock, but even that makes my brain go all spinny so I close my eyes again.
“That’s not enough air circulation,” I point out, eyes still closed. “If you’re going to use that thing in here we need real ventilation.”
“This is plenty of ventilation,” he says. “Unless you wanted to die of hypothermia instead.”
“It’s making me dizzy.”
“Carbon monoxide doesn’t do that.”
Shit, he’s right. I’ve still got my eyes shut, and I’m still fighting the tilt in this airplane cabin, trying to maintain control or something like it.
“It’s probably the concussion,” he says, still not looking at me. “Those’ll do that.”
I take a deep breath, leaning sideways against the headrest of the seat, letting my eyes drift closed. There are so many questions that I need answered, like where we are or how we got here, but I’m just so tired that I let myself rest like this and fade away.
It’s carbon monoxide poisoning, my brain whispers right before I’m asleep again. I always knew Wilder Fucking Flint was going to be the death of me, one way or another.
The next time I wake up it’s light. Not really light, but I can tell that it’s not night time any more, the snow-covered gray light of dawn seeping through the tiny plane’s windows.
I’m not in the seat any more. I’m on the floor of the plane, lying on top of an emergency tarp or something, coats piled on top of me.
And I have to pee. Jesus Christ, do I have to pee.
I shove myself up with one arm, every joint protesting, not to mention my bladder. It makes my eyes water, but I grit my teeth, force myself up to sitting.
Everything is sore. Everything, every single part of my body feels like I’ve been hit by a truck, not to mention the plane is at an angle so e
verything feels strange and off-kilter and also, I feel like I might puke.
And I don’t know where we are. I don’t know if rescue’s coming, I don’t even know where Wilder is right now but those are all problems that can wait until after I pee.
I get on my hands and knees. Every part of my body hurts and my glasses are off again, so the inside of the airplane is more lights and shapes than anything else.
I inhale, exhale, will myself not to pee my pants and glance to one side. Right in front of me, on the floor, is a shape I’d recognize anywhere, in any context, no matter what.
My glasses, neatly folded. I grab them and shove them on, finally able to see, and with one last deep breath, I push myself to a squat.
My right ankle screams in pain, and I fall over. My elbow smashes into the floor hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“Shit,” I gasp out, not even able to move for a moment. My ankle’s hurt badly, maybe broken, and I’m afraid I just peed myself, maybe broke my elbow at the same time.
I’m going to die here.
This is the end, this is it, I’m going to die in a crashed plane in a puddle of my own pee and it’s because I trusted Wilder again like some kind of idiot.
This has to be a nightmare. It has to be. There’s no other possibility.
“Wake up,” I say out loud.
I don’t, but after a moment, the pain in my elbow and ankle starts to fade. I get my hand on the floor, shove myself to sitting again. This time I manage to stand on just one leg, my good leg, and I hold myself up against the two back seats of the Cessna, head bowed against the freezing cold roof.
Painfully, I hop forward, using the top and sides of the plane to balance myself, and when I’m almost to the cargo door it swings open, a puffy black form standing right outside it, looking at me like I’m gum that got stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
