8. CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVEN
SASHA
I t didn’t feel like we were falling, it felt as though we were flying. My cheeks hollowed with air and my lips flapped around. The noise was loud and whistly, like when you stick your head out of the car on a highway going at full speed. The wind only made my wrist hurt more. My arms stretched out along with my legs like a superhero. There was a heavy sense of unchecked adrenaline rush and fear. People had said that they felt free when skydiving, but right then I felt like a prisoner back in an old cell.
We weren’t supposed to go through clouds, especially dark storm clouds, but that’s exactly what we were doing as we fell at around one hundred and twenty-four miles per hour. It was like a rollercoaster but more dangerous and wet.
“I need to release the parachute soon,” Zeke yelled in my ear. “Normally it would be longer but we had dropped a few thousand feet because of the plane.”
I didn’t have a voice so I just nodded to let him know I’d heard him
This was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to be one thing I could cross off my bucket list, but I couldn’t think about anything else other than falling to my death.
“Fuck.” Zeke fumbled with something behind me, cursing out a few more words. Ten seconds later I felt like someone grabbed the back of my neck and yanked me upward, straight toward heaven. “The parachute failed. I had to use the spare.”
We slowed down to around twenty miles per hour. The green, blue, and brown colors visible from the plane were starting to form into objects and places. Except it felt like we were miles away from where we were supposed to land.
There was a loud crash and then a rumble behind us and I even felt a gust of warm wind. The plane had gone down along with the body of the pilot. It scared me to think we were in that damn death trap only a few minutes before.
“Slide into your landing on your ass,” Zeke said. “Lift your legs so you don’t break them.”
Using my stomach muscles, I lifted my legs as though I were high on a swing on my way down. I felt the same flutters in my stomach. I braced myself for the landing but it was Zeke who took the brunt of the fall.
He bounced on the grass a few times before he used his legs to guide us to a complete halt. “We’re safe, Sash,” Zeke said, then unclipped everything that connected us. “We did it. You did it.”
I felt the harness drop and I stepped out of it before I tumbled onto the ground, finally managing to settle on my knees after removing my goggles. We were in a small open field and were surrounded by an abundance of trees and bushes. Zeke and I were lucky there was a safe place to land and we didn’t get stuck in the branches and have to cut ourselves free.
I couldn’t breathe. I choked up and leaned forward, feeling the same nauseating feeling I had two nights before. Eating breakfast was supposed to help with that, but I wasn’t sick from the skydive. I was sick because of what happened before we jumped.
The grass and dirt felt sharp against my palms and the twigs stabbed my flesh. I couldn’t stop gagging until I threw up. It felt like my entire insides, including all my organs were projectile vomiting from my mouth.
“Sasha, you okay?” Zeke’s voice was a welcome sound. He fell down beside me. “Are you hurt?”
I finally stopped and looked at him. He had blood smeared just under his nose and across his lips. I hadn’t noticed that when we were on the plane. “Oh, God. You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Are you hurt?” Zeke started to pat me down as he searched for any bruises or broken bones. The emotional pain ran deeper than the physical at that point until he reached my wrist.
“Ow!” I put my hand against my chest and cried. “I don’t know what happened. Oh, God. Nick. Where the hell is Nick?”
“You need to listen to me.” Zeke tucked my face in his firm hands. “We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave Nick,” I urged. “We need to find him.”
“Nick will be okay. We need to go, right now.”
“What about Mike? He’s got to be somewhere close.”
“He’ll be fine.” Zeke took off his harness and tossed it aside on top of the open orange parachute. “He’s a pro with the right equipment to find his way back.”
“I can’t leave Nick, Zeke.” Tears came falling almost as fast as our skydive. “He’s with that fucking psychopath that shoved him out of the plane.” My entire body trembled. I shivered like it was in the middle of winter and my bare feet were sunken in three inches of snow.
“You’re in shock.” Zeke moved closer and gently took my wounded hand in his. “Can you walk?”
I could barely breathe and this asshole wanted me to walk? Okay, so he wasn’t an asshole. He’d just saved my life. I shook my head clear. “I don’t think so.”
Zeke lifted off his long-sleeved t-shirt and tied it around my wrist. He still had a short-sleeve underneath. “I’m gonna help you up and then hold you for a moment,” he said. “Then you gotta walk with me, okay?”
Zeke stood first, still gripping onto me. I placed one foot on the grass while I rested on the other knee, and then he lifted me the remainder of the way.
My hands had printed dents from pressing my palms on the grass. Mud had settled underneath my fingernails. I usually trimmed them short as it was easier for typing, but had kept them longer the last few weeks.
Zeke looked around and checked his watch. “We gotta go south.” He grabbed the orange parachute and gathered it all up into a tight ball before shoving it in the backpack. He then swung the bag around his arms and shoulders.
“We’re so far from anything,” I told him.
“It’ll take a bit but we’ll get there,” he said. “We need to get help.” Zeke pointed toward deeper into the woods. “We’ll go through there.”
“Are you nuts?”
“It’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re fucking crazy.” I nudged my arm away from him when I suddenly felt strength return to my body.
“That’s the safest way back.”
“My phone,” I remembered. I tucked it in a skydiving bag they gave us before we got on the plane. “I’m gonna try and call Nick.”
Zeke’s eyes bulged when he noticed me take out my cell from the small hip sack they gave us. He stepped closer, snatched the phone from my hand, and stomped on it after dropping it to the ground. “They can track us.”
“Who can track us?” I yelled looking at the broken pieces scattered around me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
This couldn’t have been about me, right? No. I was safe. I’d let go of everything in my past life except for Reece and Alice.
“You can’t trust anyone,” Zeke held my shoulders tight and squeezed. “Not even Nick. You can only trust me.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Listen to me.” His eyes shone with an urgency that matched the tone of his voice. “People are coming to look for us and it’s not the type of people you want finding you. Either you stick with me and live or you go by yourself and die.”
“Go by myself and die.” Okay, it wasn’t the time for a joke but sometimes I used humor in bad situations as a coping mechanism.
“Wrong answer.”
I didn’t know what to think anymore. My brain couldn’t function at any capacity. Maybe my family did find me again, somehow.
“Do you have something to do with this?” I questioned Zeke.
He looked at me like I’d just asked him if he killed my imaginary dog. “Some guy just tried to pretty much assassinate us all on a skydiving plane.” Zeke’s face was red with frustration. “What the hell could I possibly have to do with it?”
Maybe he was just trying to help me. Zeke had just saved my ass yet again after all.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to accuse you. I’m just kinda freaked out right now.”
“I know you’re scared, Sash.” Zeke reached over and touched my shoulder again. The blood still on his face was unnerving. “I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going anywhere.”
I nodded and silently thanked him.
“Come on, we need to get out of eyesight.”
Toward the horizon ahead, gray smoke slithered up from behind the trees. It was some distance away but it was clearly our plane. “Do you think they’ll send a rescue team?”
“They’ll find Mike first before they find us.”
“It’ll be our bodies, right? Our decomposed bodies with maggots coming out that they’ll find.” Geez, Sash. Way to go with the imagery.
“Of course not. By the time they find us, we’ll be skeletons.”
“Joking at a time like this?”
“Who said I was joking?”
Ugh, this was utter bullshit.
“What about Nick?” I questioned. I couldn’t forget about my friend but it seemed like that’s all Zeke wanted to do.
“He’ll be fine, I’m sure of it.”
“Remember when you said you wouldn’t make a good friend,” I reminded him of our previous conversation. “I think you were right.”
Zeke laughed but I didn’t find it funny for one damn second. “I tried to warn you.”
We walked toward the forest ahead. It seemed counterproductive going into the middle of a jungle, especially since we wanted to be found by the right people. Or at least I did.
The path was uneven. I thanked the lord for choosing sneakers instead of simple, closed shoes. My wrist was still wrapped up with Zeke’s shirt. It smelt like sweat and cinnamon mixed with metallic blood.
The scent in the air shifted as we walked further into the woods. It was just after 9:00 am and I heard the birds chirping in the trees. It should have calmed me down but at that point, if nature wasn’t going to do it, nothing would.
“What’s your thoughts on the situation?” I asked Zeke. “Do you have any theories?”
Zeke’s steps behind me were loud and I knew every time he would get closer. “Not really.”
“Oh, come on.” I stomped my feet when I felt ants had crawled up my ankle and into my socks. They made my skin itch. I picked at the ones I could find one by one until I couldn’t see anymore. “You must have some idea.”
It definitely couldn’t have been about my family, though I did recall that Travis pointed his knife at me. As much as I wanted to continue interrogating Zeke, it might actually backfire and open a can of worms about my true story. And that, I wasn’t ready to confess to him or anyone for the sake of my safety.
“Okay, fine. I do have a theory,” he admitted. “But nothing I want to share with you right now.”
“Fine. You keep your secrets,” I told him. “I’ll keep mine.”
For however long that would be.