Chapter 5
Five
I grew up in a generation where parents took breathing hard as backtalk.
—Dru’s secret thoughts
DRU
A plane crash and a tornado.
The odds were nearly impossible, yet I’d been wide awake through it all.
I watched as the plane had disintegrated around me, yet miraculously, not one single thing had touched me throughout the entire process.
I’d watched as the flight attendant had been sucked out of the side of the airplane when a huge hunk had ripped free of it a few seconds before we’d crashed into the ground.
The couple directly behind us were next—I would never be able to forget their screams.
Then the trees ripped the plane to pieces.
Yet, through it all, what felt like a protective bubble had surrounded the two seats at the very front of the plane.
Finnian and I had been along for the ride, and despite crashing into the ground, we’d both come out relatively unscathed.
The pilot must’ve slowed us down enough that we hadn’t hit as hard as we could have. Or something.
I didn’t know.
But I felt like we could’ve hit way harder had he done nothing.
We’d both impacted the ground at the base of a tree, and somehow, the twisted metal of the plane had wrapped us around the tree at the base and come to a rocking halt.
Yet again, neither one of us had gotten all that harmed in the process of the metal impacting the tree.
I remembered thinking, oh yay, I’m not dead.
But then the tornado had happened, and I’d closed my eyes and the next thing I knew, I opened them and found my seat hanging above Finnian’s. We’d still been wrapped around the tree, but the force of the wind had picked up my seat and twisted me.
Yet again, the tornado had ripped through the world around us, taking up trees and snapping them like toothpicks.
And we’d lived.
We’d. Fucking. Lived.
The only thing that was amiss about the two of us was that Finnian had a sliver of wood that looked like it penetrated through his entire thigh.
It wasn’t a huge piece. Just about the size of a pencil.
But when he’d moved, I’d seen something sticking out the other side that looked a hell of a lot like the same sliver of wood.
I wasn’t surprised.
The tree that we’d been hung up on had been ripped to shreds, and the only thing left of the huge tree was about six feet of trunk, all the bark stripped completely, with the top splayed open like a blooming onion.
And now, I was staring at the green sky above me, thinking that I was going to experience a second tornado.
I looked off to the side and stared at the landscape, wondering if there was anything that we could get to for cover, and found nothing.
I looked the other way to find more of the same.
Pieces of metal were everywhere, all of the pieces so small that they didn’t resemble an airplane at all. More like tinfoil confetti.
“Did you happen to see where we were before we landed?” I asked hopefully.
“You mean when we crashed?” He sat up and looked down at his thigh.
I sat up as well and examined the underside.
“Good,” I said, seeing his pants on that side weren’t sporting a sliver of wood. “It didn’t go all the way through.”
I reached for the sliver of wood and touched it.
He hissed out a breath and shot me a death glare.
“I don’t know how it’s good,” he admitted when he stuck his fingers into the hole and ripped it wide open. “This fucking hurts.”
“Where it’s going in, there are no arteries,” I pointed out. “And it’s not all the way through, so at least you have a direction you can pull it out. Here’s hoping that it’s not all the way…”
I ripped the sliver of wood out of his thigh and was thankful to only see about four inches or so had come out bloody.
“Fuck!” he roared. “What the hell was that?”
I gave him a droll look.
“It had to come out,” I said as I tossed the sliver to the ground. “Come on. Let’s figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do.”
He looked at my hand that I’d held out to him and snorted. “I’m easily twice your size. And you’re barely standing up. I think I’ll get myself up, darlin’.”
He had a point.
I was on my feet, but I was dizzy and swaying with each gust of the wind—and let’s just say that the wind wasn’t very soft. It was more like gusty winds that would blow you right over if you weren’t careful.
He sat up like it was effortless and rolled to his feet, using his arms and legs to force himself upright.
A single rivulet of blood trailed down his left temple, and I walked up to him and turned his face sideways so I could see.
“A cut,” I breathed. “Does your head hurt?”
He shook his head. “Neck does a bit, though.”
I let him go, and he lifted my chin and twisted my head left and right. “You look good. Other than you look like you stood in front of a mulching machine. You have shavings of wood all over you.”
I also had a ton of microcuts everywhere. I could feel them stinging my skin.
“The tornado,” I breathed. “It was crazy.”
And it was.
I’d never be able to put into words just how scary it was.
Then again, I didn’t know if it was scary because of the plane crash I’d just survived, or because it was scary all on its own.
I would hopefully never experience one again to know either way.
Then again, by the way that the sky was looking, I might not get that wish.
“Fuck,” he said when a stray bolt of lightning landed so damn close to us it made my ears ring.
I tried to pop my ears and couldn’t.
“We have to get out of here,” I decided, jerking my head in the opposite direction of where the lightning had just struck.
He shook his head. “There’s nowhere to go.”
He was right.
There really wasn’t.
We were in the middle of a dense grove of trees, and the only clear path there was followed the path of the tornado.
“Let’s follow that path, I guess,” I suggested.
He shook his head.
He reached for his pocket, but he came up empty. “No phone.”
I held up my own hands. “Mine’s gone. It was on the tray table.”
And that had gone missing somewhere in the middle of our downward death spiral.
In fact, I distinctly remembered that tray table hitting someone…
I viciously closed that thought off.
I couldn’t think about it right now.
Not and get through this.
“Let’s walk this way,” he said as he pointed down a slope. “Maybe we can find water, then follow the stream south. We’re bound to hit something eventually.”
“If we stayed here, we might have someone find us but…”
But it looked like Mother Nature was about to throw a second fit today, and we were likely not going to be the only thing wrong after a tornado had just ripped through the world. Everything was going to be chaos for a while. We really were on our own.
“Okay.” I reached for his hand. “Let’s go.”
We went, and I noticed that he didn’t pull away.
We started walking down the hill that was closest to us, and as we did, more and more pieces of the plane could be spotted.
But all of those pieces were unrecognizable.
There wasn’t a single piece that I could pinpoint where it was located on the plane.
That is until we got to the bulk of the body of the plane, and then I could make out the metal cylinder that had once housed tons of passengers.
“Do you think they all…?”
Died?
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
I didn’t want to contemplate the amount of death that had taken place. How could I…
I didn’t finish that thought, either, because we got to our first person.
A woman wearing a red dress.
And she was most certainly dead.
The tree through her body was a very good indicator.
I quickly turned away, my gaze scanning the clearing.
There were several other people in the clearing, but none of their injuries were conducive with life.
There were missing limbs.
Terribly twisted necks.
Hell, there were two that were missing a head, and their bodies were perfectly sitting in the seats that they’d buckled themselves into.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the lightning flashed across the sky.
The crack of it sounded seconds later, and it was once again so loud and close that my hair stood on end and my ears rang.
“Come on.” Finnian squeezed my hand lightly. “Let’s keep looking.”
We did.
We found several more bodies as we descended the hill. I checked them all for pulses because they looked like their limbs were still intact, but every last one of them were dead.
Movement to our left had us turning our heads, but a young doe was the only thing to make an appearance.
There were no people alive.
Not a single one.
We walked and we walked.
It felt like it was forever, but it was likely only a few minutes, until we got to our first stream.
Or, more accurately, a small river.
“Go downstream. Almost all rivers flow south,” he suggested.
I limped at his side, noticing that he didn’t limp at all.
“How do you think we survived that?” I asked him as another rumble of thunder shook the world around us.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was wondering the same thing.”
I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat and whispered, “I’m scared.”
He squeezed my hand. “Me too.”
This time, we really did walk a long time.
The thunder continued to sound and the lightning kept brightening up the sky, but the rain held off.
“It’s getting dark,” I murmured. “Where do you think we are?”
“The flight is about three and a half hours or so. We were on that plane for a solid two before we crashed. Best guess, Arkansas or Tennessee,” he rumbled. “Look, there’s a shack up ahead.”
I limped next to him until we got to it, and he wrenched open the door.
There was nothing inside but a bunch of boating stuff. Some life jackets. A kayak. Some oars. A blow-up boat that was in need of a lot more air before I’d consider getting into it.
“I could get into that kayak and float until I see something,” I suggested.
“It’s a kid’s,” he said. “Rated for about a hundred pounds max. You won’t be able to float that anywhere. You weigh too much.”
I grimaced.
He was right.
It was very small, and although I was a woman, I wasn’t small enough to keep that kayak above the water.