Path of Ranger: Volume 1

by RJ

  “Hey, Tina? Tina? Please, wake up. Hey.”

  The girl kept trying to wake up her friend for nearly a minute. She took her time, not rushing to increase the effort. With all that concern for her close one, El completely forgot about herself. The blond had no idea if she was injured like Tina. Perhaps the thought of being left alone there was a much worse scenario for her.

  Tina’s arm shifted. In a few seconds, the brunette woke up with a sudden greedy impulse to breath. Her eyes opened wide and her face looked so terrified that even El gained a part of that state.

  “Hush-hush… It’s okay, dear,” El rushed to comfort the girl.

  She put her hands on Tina’s face and moved her head closer. Tina was so confused that she didn’t even know where they were or what had happened. Only the familiar smell of El’s perfume brought some sense of safety to her. The light from the phone appeared to be too sharp for the unadjusted eyes of the girl. She moved her hand up to dim the light. El saw what that was about and removed the cell phone.

  “Hey, how are you?” she asked.

  “I… I’m not sure,” her soft whispering voice answered. “My head is spinning. It is hard to breathe.”

  The girl tried to shift upwards, but with the first movement a sharp strike of ache flashed through her head.

  “Ah-h-h!” she cried painfully.

  El hugged her friend right away to make her feel better.

  “Don’t move. You’ve been hit hard on the head. You need some rest.”

  “Is it bad?” Tina asked, then sat back and closed her eyes preparing for the worse.

  “No, I don’t think so. You'll be alright, just try not to move much.”

  “How do you know that it’s fine?”

  “Remember those first aid lessons?”

  “Yeah?”

  “One of us was listening, you know,” El smiled.

  Tina ironically smiled in return.

  “You’re lying about the injury. They taught us good.”

  In a few minutes the brunette's pain passed and she felt much better. They kept sitting tight, neither of them thought of trying to get out yet. The students had no idea what was going on anywhere out of their seats, or what to do. Only an occasional flash and sparks from the damaged cables reminded them that there was something else besides them.

  It was quiet in the plane, no talking, no fuss. The girls were afraid of going out there, but staying in one spot wouldn’t be a solution either. At some point, their fear grew so high that it made breathing much harder. But right out of the blue a beam from a flashlight blinded them. It was like a beam of lost hope. They accepted it as a good sign.

  The source of light originated from the head of the plane, not far from the entrance to the first class area. A man’s silhouette appeared in the light. Another person was following him from behind. When those people showed up, El lifted her hand up and waved as broadly as she could. Tina wanted to participate but felt weak, she didn’t have enough energy. El tried to shout out, she couldn’t because of the voice loss. All she managed to push out were a whisper and rattle, just like when she talked to Tina. The blond thought that if she didn't scream right away she would miss the chance, and they both would be left there forever. She panicked. Only after some time she realized that the lights were aimed directly at them. They had been noticed right away.

  A group of people came in from the main entrance, El couldn’t see how many exactly, but it seemed to her like five or so. They were moving slowly, with great care, as if they were afraid of something. In about a minute, the first one of them came closer. The sight-blocking flashlight made it impossible to recognize his face. On his arrival to their seats, the man put the flashlight down and paused a few seconds. He put his hand on the seat’s back to lean on it and moved his face closer to the girls. They finally could see the man. His face looked pleasant, the soft light reflected from the floor revealed a strong jaw along with bulging, manly cheekbones and small eyes. After scanning the face, El noticed his uniform, he was the captain. The girls were relieved.

  “Hello. Are you fine?” the pilot asked.

  “Am-m… Yes… I guess so. Are you?”

  El had lots of questions, but it all mixed up in her head. She couldn’t express any of them.

  “Can you move?” the captain asked switching his sight between El and Tina.

  “What happened?” the blond asked.

  “We crashed. The instruments are dead. We need to leave the plane quickly. A short circuit caused the fire, it burns out the air. Soon it’s going to be impossible to breathe at all. We have to leave the fuselage in case if the flames reach the fuel tanks. So, can you move?” the pilot repeated his question.

  “Yes, I think so…” El responded. She turned to Tina, who nodded showing her affirmation too.

  “We have to hurry then. There is not much time.”

  With the captain’s help, the girls started moving. The questions of the crash were put in the background. The top priority became to survive, doing any actions necessary. They quickly looked at the seats to take the most important stuff and kept following the instructions.

  The captain led the group to the exit, where others waited on them. They were ready to move out when El stopped near the door to the first class area.

  “Are you okay?” the stewardess asked the student.

  “What about them? Aren’t we going to take them with us?” El asked looking at the ruined passage to the first class.

  “We’ve checked it earlier. No survivors there,” the captain said.

  “How can you be so sure? Is there a possibility?”

  “The plane crashed ten hours ago, there are thirty-three survivors, including you. All of the others are outside. I’ve checked the first class area personally, using the entrance from the cabin. All of the passengers there were dead. We came back here to make sure that we’re not leaving anyone behind. You are the only ones alive,” the captain put his hand on El’s shoulder. “I’m truly sorry, but all others have died.”

  “Let’s go, El. We have to go,” Tina said, helping her friend to start moving.

  They were climbing down the angled passage, in the tail’s direction. The plan was to go out through the baggage compartment, using the hatch of the chassis as an exit. Judging by captain’s confident maneuvers, it wasn’t his first time that day doing so.

  When the plane was behind, the small group of the last survivors joined the big one outside. The people looked desperate, but after seeing only two new passengers with the search group, it became even worse. There were other students among the survivors; Eugene, Fred, Alex, Vladimir, and Vitaliy. El and Tina joined the others right away.

  A fuss emerged around the passengers. A woman was trying to run back to the plane, but a couple men stopped her.

  “Let me go!” she screamed fiercely.

  “Ma’am, you need to wait here! We have to stay away from the fuselage for our own safety,” Skyman tried to reason with her.

  “You haven’t found my daughter!”

  “Where was her seat?”

  “Right next to mine, in front of business class.”

  She handed the pilot her ticket to check it out. But it wasn’t necessary. People looked at the fuselage, which had an enormous dent in it, right where the ‘business’ and ‘first’ classes met. The pieces of the plane’s sheathing were missing and damaged. It seemed clear that there were no survivors. Yet, no one had the courage to say it out loud.

  The captain looked at Ellison with remorse.

  “No… No,” the woman spoke, shaking her head in denial. Her eyes filled up with tears. “My daughter is not dead.”

  Just as Skyman made a first move up towards the woman to calm her down, the stewardess stepped up.

  “Josh, can I see the ticket?” she asked the captain.

  “Sure,” he gave away the paper.

  Everyone stared at the stewardess.

  “Captain, there was no C-2 seat in the plane. I mean, when
we went in to evacuate the survivors, some of the seats were missing, along with the passengers. I think, they could’ve been torn out while the plane was going down,” the stewardess turned to the woman. “Ma’am, what is your name?”

  “Ellison.”

  “Elison, I’m Kate,” she introduced herself. “Do you have your daughter’s picture?”

  “Yes, right here…”

  Ellison looked around to find her purse. She spotted it in few feet away on the ground. Then used her phone to show a photo of her daughter to the stewardess.

  “No, she wasn’t among the dead passengers. I saw all of them,” Kate said when handing the phone back.

  “What? So where is she?”

  Skyman saw an opportunity to set up an order once more.

  “Please, don’t worry yet, ma’am. If her seat flew out from the plane during the fall, she might be okay. The seat could’ve landed on a tree or on the water. It could happen.”

  “Yeah, I saw a video once, where the guy was skydiving. And his parachute wouldn’t open, so he fell into a bush and survived,” some man from the group said. “He broke his leg or something, though…”

  It wasn’t much help for Skyman, but he had to remain confident, even if he didn’t believe in miracles himself.

  “We are going to find your daughter, mam.”

  “Mia. Her name is Mia.”

  “We are going to find Mia, Ellison. I promise,” he put his palm on her shoulder. “Now we all have to be strong. It’s not a time for panic. We all need some rest.”

  The darkness was thriving in the night. Not a single star could be seen behind the cloud cover. Yet the passengers were looking up at the sky, knowing that the stars were there somewhere, shining, not even suspecting what was going on there, on the ground. The metal giant lay at the end of the passage, which it had dug out earlier. Surrounded by the jungle. Dozens of trees were torn into pieces and left behind on the braking track. The nearby ground was full of metal shreds and various stuff from the plane's baggage.

  The group of people gathered around the fire camp to have a rest. They kept a safe distance from the fuselage but stayed close enough to not get lost in the woods. A warm wind blew, playing its symphony on tropical plants. It was quiet, peaceful. Still, the place caused uncertain feelings inside of each one of them. Like something strange, or alien even, filled the air. Something that made their skin shiver from time to time. Suddenly, out of the blue, a cold chill rolled through the glade. It was freezing to the bones. And in a few seconds it disappeared. It was a warning, they weren’t alone there, something else was around, something evil. They all felt it, but none had the courage to speak of it. Whatever that was, it felt the presence of the strangers. They weren’t welcome. What was that place?

  The survivors of the flight ‘UA-Air 107’ Kiev - Los Angeles stayed together around the crash location. They were scared, confused and intimidated. Each one of them hoped for a rescue team to come soon. But the spirit of the jungle was radiating such a vivid sense of fear, that it dimmed most of their hopes into blackness.

  The fire was the one thing that brought them a bit of peace, so everyone tried to keep as close to it as possible. Those who were familiar stayed near each other. The sorrow brought them together to unite against the difficulties that lay ahead. It was vital for surviving. Several hours passed in silence, no one had spoken a single word. Perhaps it was stress. Each of the people had different thoughts on their minds. Some were concerned about their close ones, who stayed on the mainland. Others occasionally kept looking at the plane’s parts, thinking about the ones still in there. But most of them weren’t able to think straight at all.

  El and Tina held together all the time. They were sitting close, keeping each other in warmth and safety. El was scared, her skin had never shivered like that in her life. As unlikely as it seemed, JB was on her mind. Not her parents or friend, but him. He wasn’t one of the thirty-three. The captain assured her that no one from the ‘first class’ lived through the crash. Her heart wanted him to live, but her mind was bringing that expectation to reality. The tiredness took over. She wanted to sleep. Her eyes were closing more and more often. She was powerless against it.

  Several more hours passed. Dawn was not far. Most of the group kept near the fire camp. All of them were exhausted, the only thing they could do was to wait for help. The captain, Josh Skyman, sat in one of the plane’s seats. He didn’t change his focus for a long time, just was watching the fire, entirely lost in his thoughts.

  On the dawn, the sky changed its darkness to a gray mist. Skyman was feeding the fire for the whole night, it was his duty. He had a chance to think a lot. Most of all he processed the mystery of the plane crash. It didn’t make sense to him. The plane had been brutally torn apart and suffered a terrible fall, but neither he nor anyone else could recall a thing.

  Until the end of the night, after long and useless tries of explaining the cause of the crash, he changed his angle of thinking. He dropped that subject for the time being and started working on a plan for further actions. They were already there, and nobody could know when the rescue team would come. The primary objective was to survive. The decisions in that direction were much harder since he had no idea where they were and who was near him. It was enormous stress for the people. When thinking about that, Skyman didn't pay attention to his own feelings, just about those who he was responsible for. Somehow he was grateful that he didn’t have a family or a lot of close ones. So it went easier on him, compared to the others. He was a bit of a loner, the pilot. The sky was his life.

  A short distraction passed, the captain returned to working on planning how to survive. He thought of two options. The first one was to stay near the plane and wait for the rescuers, who had to follow the distress signal. But he didn’t know if the instruments were still intact. And, judging by the overall look of the plane, he hardly believed it. He did tell the passengers that the equipment was dead, though, but it was just his hunch. An excuse for them not to come back to the plane. The second option meant for them to leave the plane and walk through the jungle to the beach. Stay there for some time in hopes for an occasional vessel to sail by.

  Both of those options were a hazard. If they stayed, there was a risk of being attacked by wild animals, plus there were no valuable resources except the ones on the plane. The option to go was dangerous because of the journey itself since most of the people had never been in the wild before. All those possible animals, poisonous snakes and insects, the unpredictable terrain and foliage. Besides, it wasn’t certain what the shore might be like. A sandy beach or rocky cliffs? The only benefit in the second option was a higher chance of being spotted from the water line and from the sky. Skyman felt responsibility for each one of the passengers, their lives were on the line and it made the decision difficult. Yet, he had to decide, he was their leader.

  What used to be a huge fire camp became a pile of ashes with a thin smoke trail coming from the center. Skyman was staring at it constantly but noticed nothing. He focused completely on his thoughts. Such a concentration was broken by the movement of one of the passengers. A man woke up. His smooth movements suddenly got sharp and abrupt when he looked around. It seemed as if he had forgotten about what happened and being there was a surprise for him. In a few seconds the man calmed down, it all came back to him. He raised up and walked towards the captain. He was nearly six feet tall, strong, with short dark hair. Straight posture and firm moves. Skyman recognized the military in him. It was easy for someone who had served in the army himself. The stranger came closer and sat on the log, next to the captain.

  “Hello,” the man said, rubbing his sleepy face.

  “Good morning,” Skyman nodded in return.

  “Steven Wash,” the man introduced himself.

  “Josh Skyman.”

  They shook hands.

  “So how are we doing, Captain?”

  “It could be worse. Not that many of us are injured,” the pilot explained
.

  “At least some good news… What’s the plan?”

  “I haven’t figured the details yet. Just have a few thoughts. When others wake up, I want to put it on a discussion.”

  “And to get to know them better, right?” Steven looked into Josh’s eyes.

  Now his look was firm and confident, not that sleepy one that was a minute ago.

  “I see you have experience?” Skyman asked, but he already had an answer.

  “Colonel of the U.S. Army,” Wash explained. “It’s vital to know who you are dealing with. What they are capable of. What to expect from them.”

  “It’s still early, let them rest some more. Then we’ll gather up for a talk. Everything will be clear then,” the captain summarized.

  Josh felt like it was said enough, so he focused back on the dying fire to keep thinking.

  The passengers were getting up. With each new one awoken the overall fuss grew, it was breaking the sleep of the others. With no proper instructions and being uncomfortable in such conditions, people were going from confusion to panic. The arguing arose nearby the rainforest glade. There wasn’t an individual subject to argue about. Just an expression of the fear and hysteria.

  Steven stood aside for a while, observing. The crowd was disputing about lots of small things, but most of all it was the further course of actions what bothered them. When the situation escalated to screaming, Wash noticed that something was missing there. The captain had disappeared. As for himself, Steven eagerly waited for everyone to wake up so they could discuss everything. And now the leader was missing. Without him, the crowd was like a pack of animals, rather than constructive human beings.

  Unless the captain would appear that instant someone had to step up to stop the kerfuffle. “I have to make it right,” Wash thought to himself. He walked around the gathering in a search of a better spot, thinking of what to say on the way. He had to choose the words carefully since he had just one chance. Otherwise, they would just ignore him.