"Oh God, Oh God!" Genie repeated, as a sudden gust of wind caught the plane, buffeting them hard, pushing the Cessna to the right toward the edge of the runway.
"Come on, baby. Come on," Collins urged as he fought to guide the aircraft back toward the center of the runway. He grimaced and pulled his injured hand from the yoke, flexed his fingers a couple of times, then grabbed the controls again as another gust of wind swept under the left wing, pushing it up. Collins fought the plane's controls, leveling the wings. "Almost there, baby. One more time. Come on," he whispered, as if his words might persuade the plane to do his bidding. "Hold on, here we go," he called out as he eased back on the yoke.
"Oh!" said Genie, as the plane momentarily left the ground. She clutched Birdy's limp body to her bosom like the kid was a doll, then let out a louder exclamation as the wheels touched down again with a bump. They left the runway for a second time... and continued to ascend into the oily black sky.
"Yes!" said Tyreese, "Yes!" He thumped the console lightly with his clenched fist. "Good job!" he said, turning to smile at Collins.
Collins nodded. The plane was already a good hundred feet or so in the air. "See," he said, his eyes finally leaving the windshield to look at Tyreese, "I told you she'd make it."
"Never doubted it for a moment," Tyreese said, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
A sudden downdraft of air hit the plane like a giant fist.
"Jeezus!" Collins exclaimed as he fought the aircraft's controls.
Tyreese grabbed onto the seat, his eyes wide as the plane dropped then surged back up again.
"We've got to get out of this goddamn storm as fast as possible," Collins said, through gritted teeth.
"Can't we just fly above it?" Tyreese asked.
Collins shook his head. "Not a chance. Storm's way too big and the plane's ceiling is way too small. Our best bet is to just head toward Vegas and hope we hold together long enough to get to quieter air."
Collins banked the Cessna until it was heading north, raised the nose so they were in a gradual climb to higher altitude and throttled up the engine.
•••
"How's Birdy holding up?" Collins asked. His eyes were focused beyond the swish-swish of the windshield wipers to the storm still plucking at the airplane.
"Not good," said Genie, her voice was quiet, barely audible above the constant thrum of the Cessna's engine. "Can you go any faster?"
"I'm going as fast as I can," Collins replied. Truth was, he was going faster than he had expected; the storm was giving them a swift kick in the pants thanks to an extra fifteen-knot tailwind. "She has to hang on. We're going to make it," he insisted.
The next forty-five minutes went by in almost complete silence as the plane headed northeast. With each passing minute the storm's ferocity diminished until the rain had all but ceased its constant hammering against the windshield and all that remained was thick cloud.
"How long until we land?" Genie asked.
"I'd estimate another fifteen minutes or so," said Collins. "When we get a little closer, I'll contact the—" Collins was interrupted by an electronic buzz and a red flashing light on the Cessna's control panel. "Ah, shit!" Collins spat.
"What? What?" said Tyreese, sitting up straight. His mind had drifted off for... how long? Minutes? Seconds? He had no real idea.
"We've got a major problem," Collins said. He leaned forward and tapped at a dial on the control panel. "Shit!" he hissed again.
"What the hell is wrong?"
"The fuel gauge. They were supposed to have... I assumed they had... they were supposed to replace the damn thing. It's faulty. I told them to change it out. Shit!"
Tyreese looked at Collins in disbelief. "So?"
Collins sighed, a deep unhappy exhalation, "So... we don't have enough fuel to get us to Waterrock."
"That's just great. Jesus!" Tyreese pounded a fist against the console.
"No need to panic, not yet anyway. I think we have enough to get to Vegas. It's not as far."
Tyreese felt the plane gently bank as Collins adjusted the Cessna's heading. "It's twenty miles or so. We should have just enough to get us—"
Collins's words stuck in his throat as the Cessna's engine sputtered twice, coughed, then died. The propeller at the front of the plane went from a blur of motion to a slow rotation.
"What? What just happened?" Genie asked.
Tyreese looked across at Collins. The detective was grim-faced, his jaw set as his hands moved quickly through what Tyreese figured must be the engine restart procedure. Nothing happened. Collins tried it one more time with the same result.
"We're going to have to put her down," Collins said.
"Where?" Tyreese and Genie said in unison.
Collins nodded at his feet. "Down," he said, and immediately put the plane into a gradual descent.
"But, there's nothing down there," said Genie.
"Not that we can see, but we're still in cloud. I've got to get us beneath this cloud bank before I'll have any idea where we actually are."
"But... but," Genie kept repeating. Birdy still lay across the leather seat; her head in Genie's lap. Genie's hand gently slid back and forth over the girl's forehead.
"Listen," Collins hissed, "Other pilots might tell you that we're 'gliding' right now. Me, being the eternal realist that I am, I like to tell it as it is: we're essentially falling out of the sky, so I'd appreciate it if you'd let me keep one-hundred percent of my attention on flying this goddamn brick."
•••
Tyreese sat back in his chair. The plane was frighteningly silent now that the engine was off. There was only the sound of air rushing over the wings and past the cockpit, and the quick inhale-exhale of the occupants' breaths. We might just as well be sinking to the bottom of a pitch black ocean, Tyreese thought as the plane dropped down through the impenetrable darkness surrounding them. And they could hit bottom before they even knew it was there.
"Sweet Jesus!" Genie said, suddenly. "There, over there." She pointed over to the right of the plane. Both Collins and Tyreese turned their heads to where she indicated.
"Ho-lee shit!" Collins exclaimed.
Tyreese just smiled. Ahead of them and perpendicular to their approach was the outline of a freeway. The road was dark, but the lights of vehicles moving along it glowed in the darkness like a shower of shooting stars. North of the road, like the Emerald City at the end of the yellow-brick road, was the unmistakable electronic glow of a city.
"Las Vegas," Collins said. "Never thought I'd be so happy to see her."
"Will we make it?" Tyreese asked, leaning forward to get a better view, as Collins gradually brought the plane around. They were flying directly over the freeway and the plane's nose was pointing straight at the distant lights of Vegas.
"Not a goddamn chance," said Collins.
"What?" Tyreese exclaimed.
"We don't stand a chance of making it to Vegas but I can put her down on the freeway... if we're lucky." He flipped a switch on the control panel, turning on a pair of landing lights that illuminated the thin veil of misty rain like tiny diamonds.
The plane continued to drop as Collins fought against the crosswinds buffeting them from both sides. The rain had all but disappeared this far from LA, replaced by a light drizzle. As they dropped silently through the air, the freeway resolved into greater detail: two three-lane highways, the headlights of cars and trucks cutting through the misty rain that still fell.
They were still a good hundred feet or so above the ground, Tyreese estimated, but he could already hear car horns honking. The headlights of oncoming vehicles in the southbound lanes flashed warnings to the drivers directly beneath the Cessna. Their lights dazzled Tyreese, but Collins seemed unfazed by them, his eyes focused directly ahead as he coerced the plane toward the center lane of the north-bound freeway looking for a space in the traffic to put them down.
"Over there," said Genie, pointing off to the right. "There's another ro
ad."
Tyreese looked in the direction Genie was pointing. She was right, there was another two lane road that ran along the side of the freeway, nowhere near as wide as the main freeway. It must be some kind of emergency access road, Tyreese guessed, but other than the headlights of a couple of cars that had drawn Genie's attention, it looked to be completely free of vehicles.
"Hold on," Collins said. He banked the Cessna toward the access road, then lined the plane up with the road and began to purposely descend. "Brace yourselves," he said, when there was less than twenty feet between the plane's tires and the blacktop.
The sudden downdraft of desert air hit the left wing of the Cessna like a giant fist. The Cessna's nose dipped, and the plane went into a steep dive.
Genie screamed in surprise and fear as the plane plummeted toward the ground.
With no visual references to help him orient himself and with just a second before impact, Collins fought the controls to level the plane out, but it was too late. The Cessna clipped some unseen object in the gloom, sheering away the right wing. The plane began to corkscrew, then tumble before its nose hit the ground, sending shards of the propeller flying through the air like shrapnel. The remains of the aircraft cartwheeled once, then smashed into the ground before sliding another fifty feet and coming to rest in the frontage road's southbound lane facing east, smoke and flame billowing from the engine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tyreese wasn't sure if he had lost consciousness or not; one moment he was watching the road approach from below, the next he was staring at the console through a red haze and his head hurt like a mother. It took a few more seconds for him to realize there was smoke all around. It wafted past him like a ghost. Within the smoke an orange light jumped and danced.
Fire! The flames flickered in front of him. He could feel the heat against his face. The flames were giving off a thick black, choking smoke that stung his eyes and clung to his throat and nostrils with each breath he took. And there was something else, something within the smoke that his watering eyes could not quite focus on.
His head really hurt.
Where the hell am I? He tried to think back to the last thing he could remember, but it was like trying to grab a piece of paper blown by the wind; his thoughts just would not stay still long enough for his mind to grasp them.
"Tyreese, please, you have to help us." The voice—it was a woman's voice—came from behind him. It sounded familiar but when he tried to put a face to it there was just a blur of color.
"What happened?" he asked. The words were hard to form, his lips were so dry.
The woman was crying, he could hear her sobbing behind him. He tried to turn to look and see who the voice belonged to but for some reason he could not move his upper body, so he turned his head in the direction instead.
There was someone next to him. He could not make out the face because of the smoke, but there was a vague but unmistakable outline of a person. Tyreese felt a cool breeze waft across his face, and a light splash of water carried on it cleared the smoke away for a second... just long enough for him to see that he was strapped into a seat, and he was looking into the blank eyes of a dead man.
That the man was dead, was obvious; a long ugly piece of metal protruded from his right side, just below the armpit. The metal bar had entered the man's body on his left side and penetrated all the way though the upper torso, pushing the dead man's right arm up so that it looked as though he was waving at Tyreese. The bloody end of the metal bar was just inches away from Tyreese's head. Luck was probably all that had saved him from ending up just like him. The real question was who was the dead guy? Tyreese felt he should know who he was, but his thoughts still refused to be herded into focus.
Collins! The name came to him like a thunderclap. The dead man's name was Collins. "Detective Phil Collins... like the rock star," Tyreese said. And as if he had uttered the magic words to unlock the mental prison holding his memory hostage, it all came flooding back to him.
"Collins!" he whispered, unable to keep the painful emotion he felt from his voice as he looked at the glassy-eyed, ghostly-white face of the dead detective. Blood ran from the corner of Collins's mouth. It had pooled on his thigh before dripping down onto the seat.
Blood.
Vampires!
"Oh, Jesus!" Tyreese was suddenly and completely alert as everything came rushing back to him. "Genie! Can you hear me? Are you okay?" He tried to turn again but felt the same pressure against his chest stopping his upper body from moving. He looked down. His safety harness was still doing its job. He popped it open and turned to look into the back of the wrecked cockpit, careful to avoid the metal spike that had ended the detective's life.
The crash had ripped the tail section of the Cessna away completely, exposing the rear of the cabin to the elements. It had also pushed the bench Genie sat on about a foot or so closer to the front of the plane on her side, trapping the woman against the back of Tyreese's seat.
"Are you hurt?" Tyreese asked Genie.
She took a second to answer. "No, I... I don't think so."
Tyreese had to give the woman credit. She had just survived a plane crash, something that would have left most people shocked and mentally broken, but she was handling it with little more than a lip tremor. Tyreese repositioned himself, pulling his feet from the crumpled dashboard of the plane. If he'd had toes, they would surely have been broken, maybe even severed. He maneuvered himself until he was kneeling on his seat, looking back into the rear of the cabin. A cool gust of wind blew in through the exposed hole where the tail had once been, driving rain in with it, fanning the flames of the fire and pushing the black smoke momentarily clear.
"Is Birdy okay?" he asked.
"I... I can't tell," Genie said. "I can't move."
Tyreese repositioned himself so he could look down into the gap between the seats. Birdy still lay with her head in Genie's lap. Her body looked unscathed by the crash but he couldn't actually see her head, trapped between Genie's lap and the seat back. He reached a hand down and took the child's left arm, trying to ignore how terribly pale she looked or the two scabbed-over puncture marks on her wrist. He felt for a pulse. It was there, but just barely.
"I'm going to get you two out of here," Tyreese said to Genie. "Can you push Birdy toward the opposite end of the seat?"
"I can't get my safety belt off," she said. The bench seat Birdy and Genie sat on had been pushed far enough forward that Genie could not reach the restraint release on her left side.
Tyreese pushed an arm into the gap between the two seats, felt around for a few seconds until he found the safety belt's release just below Birdy's collar bone. He pushed his arm all the way down to his shoulder, gently lifted Birdy's body with his fingers, and fumbled for the release button with his thumb. He heard the metal belt fastener pop free.
"What's wrong with the cop?" Genie said suddenly, a puzzled look on her bloodied face.
"He didn't make it," Tyreese said, matter-of-factly.
Genie paused for a moment, considering her next words. "He was a good man; you know... for a cop." She turned her attention back to Birdy. "I can't move her," she said after a few seconds. "Can't get any leverage."
"Can you wriggle free?" Tyreese asked.
Genie tried. Her torso moved up a bit, but that was it. "I think my leg is hurt. Can't put much weight on it."
"Okay, here's what we're going to do," said Tyreese. He pushed both of his hands under the woman's armpits. "I'm going to help you. You ready?"
Genie nodded. "As I'll ever be."
"Okay, on three... three." Tyreese pushed his hands up into Genie's armpits with all his remaining strength. Genie grimaced with pain and exertion, but after a few seconds, she was able to get first one hand then the other free. She placed them on the front and back seat and applied her own strength to push herself the remaining way until, finally, she was free, sitting precariously on the ridge formed where the rear seat and the back of Tyreese's sea
t met. The right leg of Genie's pants was torn just below the knee about six inches. It was stained with blood. Genie winced as she probed through the slashed material to the wound beneath. Her fingers came away bloodied.
"Can you walk?" Tyreese asked.
Genie nodded. "Maybe... yes... I think so." She was sucking down big gulps of air.
The fire at the front of the crashed plane, where the engine used to be, was growing hotter, Tyreese could feel it singeing the small hairs on the back of his neck.
"We need to get out of here," Tyreese said. "Can you open the door?"
Genie reached over from her perch atop the crushed seats and tried the door handle; the door opened a couple of inches but would not budge any farther than that.
The hinges had probably been crushed during the crash, Tyreese thought. He reached across Genie and gave the door a good hard push, but it refused to move. "Shit," he mumbled, then turned and looked at Collins's body. He leaned across the man, and unlatched the lock to the pilot's-side door, then pushed; it was stiff but with the application of a little force, he was able to push it open. He took a deep breath then pulled himself as carefully as he could over the dead man's lap, snagging his jacket on the jagged piece of metal protruding from Collins's body, tearing out the pocket.
Tyreese grimaced as he stepped out of the wrecked plane; what should have been clean air stank of burning rubber and oil and the memory of aviation fuel.
How in God's name had they survived that crash? He looked over the crushed wreckage of the unrecognizable aircraft; the wings were gone, torn off somewhere in the rut of broken earth and fractured blacktop they left behind when they hit the ground. It was a miracle any of them were alive at all, and he would happily take the cards he had been dealt. As it was, only Collins had been dealt a bad hand; he could see now that it was the strut that supported the plane's left wing that had been thrust through his cabin door by the impact, impaling Collins. Tyreese was sure the man died instantly, never knowing what had quite literally hit him. Tyreese was surprised at how badly he felt for the detective; he had been a good man, shouldn't have had to die that way. But there were worse ways to die, much worse ways. If dying to a vampire could even be described as death. Not if you come back from it.
The Darkening Page 28
