Last week I wrote a cliffhanger short story for Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge. This week I finished up someone else’s story from that first exercise. However, while I got several very nice comments about my cliffhanger story (thanks y’all, very much appreciated!), no one chose my story as their starting point for this week’s challenge. Yet several folks have said that they still want to know what comes next in my cliffhanger. So, here’s a bonus bit of fiction to tie up those loose ends. Even better, I can make it as long as it needs to be. None of this “1,000 words or so” to deal with! 3,200+ words! Whoo-hoo!
(Another good reason for writing this is that it’s windy as all get out here in SoCal today, which has in turn knocked out the power. It may be a couple of hours before we get it back- but I can write most of this on my iPad! Let’s here it for living the First World! Now if I could just open the fridge to get a cold Diet Coke…)
MIDAIR II
Coming down deadstick over the forest, I was trying to watch five things at once.
I needed to keep my airspeed pegged for maximum glide, but with the master switches off and all of the electronic avionics dead, I was watching the backup “steam” gauges over on the passenger’s side.
I was also looking at the terrain to make sure that I would clear the trees and land somewhere in the fields beyond.
I was also trying to watch the approaching fields through the busted windshield to see if there were any obstacles to dodge at the last second.
I was also trying to glance at the emergency checklist to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything critical.
I was also trying to get any clue from the trees and fields about the wind direction, since it would be much safer and easier to land into the wind. With the wind would be bad, a strong crosswind could be fatal.
I was trying as hard as I could to clot and coagulate so that blood would stop running into my eyes.
Finally, I was trying to remember to always fly the plane. Fly the plane. FLY THE PLANE!
Adrenaline is great stuff — ask for it by name!
About thirty seconds out I had cleared the trees and saw a big field of corn stretching out before me. There were some large farm buildings, barns, and a tent on the right side, but I didn’t need to get anywhere near them. The way the corn was waving clearly showed me that the wind was blowing straight at me. I had half expected that since I had been flying with a stiff tail wind when I had collided with the flock of geese a few minutes earlier, but it was great to get confirmation.
Perfect! It would be like landing in a big pit of foam packing peanuts.
Two seconds after that thought, I saw how wrong I was. Instantly, my intended landing sit was just as unacceptable as it had previously been wonderful.
As I approached I could finally see the far side of the barns. There sat three school buses. The corn I could now see wasn’t smooth, but had paths cut through it.
I was flying at eighty-seven knots with tanks half full of highly flammable avgas straight into a corn maze full of school kids. With my engine out, I was almost completely silent. They would never know what hit them.
It was too late to make any drastic moves. I was only one hundred feet up, with no engine. I had nowhere to go but down. But if I lost control and spun or stalled now, not only would I be down on top of the kids, I would be out of control, spinning, and crashing. Exploding and burning.
Without thinking I banked to the left as much as I dared, away from the corn field and the farm buildings. My headwind was now a crosswind, working to lift my right wing and try to roll me. The turn started killing my speed and threatened to make me stall. I lowered the nose to keep the speed up, fought to keep the turn shallow, and hoped for the best. It wasn’t much of a turn, I was way too low, but it was enough.
The trees at the south side of the farm came up at me like a freight train. They were mostly some kind of pines and it was like hitting a row of bushy telephone poles. I had just enough time to get level, pull back hard, try to flare to bleed off some speed, and brace for the crash.
The fact that I came back to consciousness meant that the plane’s cabin hadn’t hit a tree head on. I was leaning back with the nose of the plane up about twenty degrees or so. I was also leaning about forty-five degrees over to the left. The broken windshield had even more damage now and there were broken pine branches sticking through it.
I could smell avgas, so there was obviously a fuel tank rupture someplace. If that gas was soaking into the pine needles underneath me, this was a really bad place to be if anything sparked. I had to get out, fast.
That was easier said than done. I took off my headphones and unbuckled my seat belt, trying to shift my weight to start sitting up. Instead of sitting however, I almost passed out again as waves of pain came up from my right leg and foot. I settled back for a second, caught my breath, waited for the bright, red stars to go away, then carefully raised my head to check out what I had injured.
My arms and ribs had gotten bashed, but nothing seemed broken. I could move them around as long as I didn’t try to shift my lower body. The cuts on my head were oozing again and seemed to have joined by at least two walnut-sized lumps. I tried moving my left leg and found that I could shift it and wiggle my toes, but there was something holding it tight. Any attempt to move my right leg brought on incredible amounts of pain.
It looked like the plane had gone between a couple of trees and sheared off the wings, which was good. That probably also caused the fuel in the wing tanks to spill, which was bad. Missing the wings, the plane cabin had carried forward until it hit another tree, stopping nose up and sideways. The collision had pushed the engine back toward me and the firewall down by my feet had buckled, trapping my left foot and probably breaking my right leg in a couple of spots.
Adrenaline will only take you so far. I had already used a lot of it in the last half hour. I needed some help, badly, or I was going to die.
Help arrived in the form of a woman’s voice connected to jeans and hiking boots. I heard her running through the underbrush and yelling at someone to stay back. I saw the boots and jeans appear outside the smashed door window next to me.
“Are you hurt? Do you need help?” she yelled.
“Yes, I’m hurt and I need help. I think… I’m pretty sure that I’ve got a broken leg, plus some other cuts and bumps. My leg is trapped and I can’t get out right now.”
She knelt down next to the plane and looked in at me. “We’ve called for help, but they won’t be here for at least thirty minutes. What can we do until they get here?”
“You have to get back away from the plane. There’s a huge danger of fire with the spilled fuel.”
She immediately sat up and looked away from me, back through the trees toward the farm.
“All of you kids get back at least fifty feet!” she yelled. “There could be an explosion and a fire. Stay back! Jennifer, you run back to the farm and meet the fire truck when it gets here. Tell them that there’s a fuel spill and a fire danger. Go! Run!”
She leaned back down toward the ground and looked around inside the cabin. She looked at my leg and reached in through the window to feel below my right knee.
“Can you feel if it’s bleeding or just broken? Are you losing blood down there?”
“I can’t feel any bleeding but I’m dead serious about the fire danger. Don’t be stupid. You have to get back away from here!”
“Duly noted. Nothing’s burning yet. I’ll run away and let you fricassee when I smell smoke, OK? Can you move your left leg at all?”
“Yes, I can move it, but not much.”
“OK. We may or may not have much time, so let’s not waste it.” She sat back on her heels and pushed gently at the plane. She rocked it a bit a couple of times, testing to see how well it would roll and shift. “This doesn’t weigh that much, so we’re going to try to shift this all back upright, then pull you out. Are you up for that?”
“Sure, it beats any ideas I have. Who is ‘we’?” I asked.
“Wait here, try not to move,” she said, ignoring my question. “I’ll be right back.”
The boots disappeared and I heard her jogging away. There was some conversation going on back behind me but I had no way of turning to see who it might be. Several minutes went by and I thought that I could hear running back and forth.
I moved only enough to reach down between the seats to gently pull lose the small fire extinguisher there. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had. Meanwhile, I was straining my ears to hear sirens, hoping that the rescue crews were near. I was straining my nose to smell smoke, but all I could smell was my sweat and blood, mixed with the smell of gasoline.
Finally I heard several sets of footsteps crunching through the pine needles. My rescuer was giving instructions to her team, whoever they were.
“Ed, you go over on that side by the tail. Bobby, you stay on this side behind the door, there. Keith, you’re up there by the nose. Ed, stay on your toes, the tail is going to swing your way. You need to stay well clear of it as it goes. OK?
“If any of you see or smell anything that might be a spark or fire, you let everyone know and blast it immediately. Remember, aim for the base of the fire, don’t shoot up in the air at the flame. If that doesn’t work, if the fire catches or spreads, bail out of here, immediately. Run. If you get caught by the fire, remember to stop, drop, and roll. No panicking. Any questions?”
She moved up next to my broken window, her boots appearing on the ground near my head. Again she knelt and bent over to peer in at me.
“How are you doing in there? Still with us?”
“I’ve had better days but I’m still here. What’s the plan?”
“Oh, good. You’ve got an extinguisher too. You relax and try to keep still. The nose is caught up on a couple of trees here, but this whole thing is light enough. We’re going to swing the tail around so that the nose comes loose and the weight of the engine should drop you upright. I’ve got three guys here with the fire extinguishers from the buses in case anything sparks.”
“The buses? Who is all here? Who are you?”
“I’m Ellen, I’m a teacher and coach at Keys High. These guys are from my team, they’ve got the muscle to get this done. Are you up for it? I don’t know when the fire truck and ambulance will get here.”
I thought about it for a few seconds. A wave of dizziness swept over me and I was starting to get nauseous. I knew what that probably meant and it wasn’t good. I didn’t know if I was bleeding from that broken leg. Ellen’s plan seemed sound. I had gotten this far in this emergency by following the book, but there wasn’t any book for this part of it. We were making it up as we went along.
“Your guys, how old are they? Are they going to be safe doing this? Am I going to be rescued by a soccer mom and a bunch of ten-year-olds?”
That got a laugh from her. “Hardly! The younger guys are all back further and their girlfriends are all back at the farm. The guys who are doing the heavy lifting are all seventeen and eighteen. It’s not soccer, it’s football. You’re going to get your ass rescued by the Cougar varsity team. They’re smart, strong, and fast.”
“OK, let’s do it.”
Without another word to me, Ellen stood up and started giving instructions to the rest of her team. On the count of three, two big lineman leaned down on the tail while another two pushed the nose away from the trees where it was caught. In just seconds, the nose came clear and dropped with a thud, the plane rolling more or less upright.
The pain from my leg was overwhelming as we rolled and banged around. The final drop onto the bent up front landing gear led to the strut collapsing and dropping the nose down onto the ground. The engine pulled back forward, pulling the my trapped right foot with it. There was a great deal of screaming and cursing, all of it from me.
Then the plane door was pulled open and I saw Ellen for the first time. She was short, built a little bit like a fire plug, with short, flaming red hair caught up under a baseball cap. Behind here I could see a half dozen very large guys, some of them holding fire extinguishers at the ready.
“Can you get your leg out now?” she asked. “We need to get you out ASAP and take a look at your head and your leg.”
My left foot was pretty much free now that the firewall had bent back out of the cabin. My right leg was in agony and I couldn’t feel or see if it was loose or not. I told Ellen, and she peered down underneath the dashboard and panel to see what was going on.
“I see what it is. There are some pedals down there. It looks like your right foot is caught up under one of them and your ankle is probably broken, maybe the leg as well. That’ll be where the pain’s coming from. I know you can’t move it, but we can move the leg for you and pull you out. It’s probably going to hurt like hell.”
“Too late, it already does. Do it, I’ve got to get out of here and we’ve all got to get away from the plane. I don’t want you or your guys near here. I’ll do my best to pass out before the screaming gets too bad and you can tell me about it later. Do it.”
Ellen sent everyone away from the plane except for the three guys carrying the fire extinguishers and one tall, strong guy who just reeked of quarterback. She crouched down inside the door near the floorboards and gently grabbed my right leg. Mr. QB leaned in over her and grabbed under my arms, partially setting me upright.
“OK, just like we do in on the quarterback sneak play, guys. Got it? On three. One.”
There never was a two or a three. I was as faked out as the opposing defense was supposed to be. Before I knew it, my leg was being twisted and pulled free, the whole world went dark with pain, there was some more screaming, crying, and swearing, and Mr QB yanked me free and out into the open like a tackling dummy. Fortunately, I was unconscious before the leg hit the ground.
I woke up, looking at the sky that was starting to get dark with dusk. I was strapped down on something soft, with a blanket over me and an IV bag suspended above. Around my leg were a couple of paramedics, and when I turned my head I could see the football team watching the proceedings. They seemed bored, as if they saw a plane crash every day. A couple were holding their phones and taking pictures.
There was obviously something really good mixed in with the saline in the IV bag. Everything was all soft around the edges and I felt no pain at all. Great stuff, whatever it was. Even better than adrenaline. Ask for it by name, too.
As the paramedics finished putting a brace on my leg and got the stretcher ready to lift into the ambulance, Ellen came toward me from behind the crowd of her team. She stood over me, looking down for a second, then asked how I felt.
“Fuzzy. I think I’ll live. I just might not like it for a day or two. Are all of you guys OK?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. The guys all have an adventure to brag about. It will do them good.”
“Did the plane burn?”
“Nope, they’re foaming it down and calling in a hazmat team now to clean up the fuel. I think that plane’s a goner though.”
“Yeah, I knew that. The insurance company owned it as soon as the geese hit.”
“Is that what happened? It was hard to tell with all of the crash damage, but I did see the dead goose on the floor as we were pulling you out.”
“Yep, it was a great emergency right up until the end. I didn’t quite stick the landing.”
“I was going to ask about that. I saw you gliding in at the last minute and you could have just gone into the corn smooth as could be. Why did you swerve off?”
“I saw the maze and the buses at the last second, didn’t want to hurt the kids. The trees were the best I could do on short notice.”
“I appreciate that. One other thing. Isn’t that a Cirrus?”
“Yeah, it is. Why?”
“Don’t they have an emergency parachute system in them?”
It was a good thing that I was doped up. That way I could lay there slack jawed and drooling for a minute and blame it on the drugs, instead of how I was feeling like the world’s biggest idiot.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the plane has a parachute. So why didn’t I use it? I just didn’t think of it. I was busy, and hurt. I haven’t flown this plane more than once or twice. I’m almost always in a Cessna and I did all of my training in Cessnas. When the emergency hit I just went by the training I had. I guess I was just stupid.”
“Given that you managed to miss me and my kids, I think you did OK.”
The paramedics picked me up and started to put the stretcher into the ambulance.
“Thank you for pulling me out of there and saving my life! And thank your guys too!”
“You can thank them all yourself, later. Me and my guys will be over to see you in a day or two.”
The ambulance doors shut and my big adventure was over for the day.
And that’s the story of how I met my wife, Ellen.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 