Chapter 38 - Gage
Pain is the first thing I become aware of.
Pain, and then the bitter smell of burnt electrical.
I groan as I force my eyes open and try to see past the banging in my head.
Everything’s a blur, so I take stock of my body while I wait for my sight to clear.
Arms and legs are sore and stiff but functioning.
Check. My ribs ache like a motherfucker when I try to take a deep breath but I think they’re just bruised.
It would hurt more if they were broken, wouldn’t it?
My head is ringing like a damn bell so I lift a hand and run it over my skull, finding one hell of a bump that’s painful to the touch.
No wetness though, so I’m not bleeding. Check.
I scrub at my eyes as memories of yelling and horrible scraping noises on the outside of the plane come rushing back and it all clicks together. Fuck, the plane crashed.
Soft sunshine is coming through the window next to me.
Ok, probably means that I was unconscious overnight so it's tomorrow now.
Check. I fight with the jammed seat belt to get it unlatched until it finally pops open.
When I try to stand, everything tilts to the side making my head spin painfully.
I grab a hold of a seatback to steady myself and after a minute I realize that in addition to my head spins, the plane is canted to one side, making it even harder to move out of the row my seat is in.
I use the forward seats to pull me up the short aisle and find one of the suit guys still strapped in.
I reach over and put my fingers to his neck and breathe out a sigh of relief when I find a faint pulse.
The problem is, part of the plane has buckled and is pressing tightly against his middle and legs.
I leave the guy there for the moment and move up to the cockpit.
The plane rocks under my feet so I slow down and shuffle - slide forward.
The cockpit windshield is smashed out and filled with tree branches.
I spot dress pants covered legs mixed in with the branches just outside the window on the nose of the plane and swallow down the nausea that floods my throat.
There’s no way that guy is still alive. I look down and to the side.
Fuck, Chuck is really, really dead. His head is tipped down, resting on the two thick branches that have impaled his chest.
Easing away, I try not to rock the plane any further and go to the door to try and get it open.
The frame has buckled, but after a solid kick that has the plane tipping even further to the right and my head thumping in pain, the door pops open a few inches.
I have to put my shoulder into it to get it open past the branches and thick brush that is wedged against it but I finally get it open enough to see out of.
With the plane tipped the way it is, there’s only a few feet to the ground, thank God.
OK, Gage, think. Ignore the pain for now.
You don’t know where you are. You don’t know if Chuck got a Mayday out.
The plane might tip over more. There might be a fuel leak.
You need to get away from the plane. Supplies!
I need to pull supplies out of the plane and then try to get the other guy out.
My mind is going a million miles a second as I try to process what to do past the raging headache and body pains I have.
I take a second to stop and smell the air.
Other than the faint smell of fried electronics, I don’t smell or see any smoke.
Check. I need to grab what I can before something else happens.
I pull back from the door and go to the storage closet at the back of the plane and start pulling things out so I can toss them out of the plane. Once I’ve scavenged everything I think might be useful, I leave the plane after doing another check on the injured guy to make sure he’s still breathing.
I drag all the gear away from the crash site to a small clearing and search through it until I find a first aid kit.
I dry swallow a couple pain pills and spread out a silver emergency blanket on the ground and then go back to the plane to try and free the other survivor.
It takes all of the little bit of strength I have to pull, push, and finally kick the panel free and get enough space to pull him out.
I'm grateful he’s still unconscious in case what I’m doing is hurting him more.
I run my hands over his arms and legs. I can’t find anything broken but he has a two-inch gash on the side of his head.
It’s when I push against his stomach to try and unlatch his seatbelt that he finally shows signs of coming to.
He moans a painful sound at the contact, so I pull his dress shirt open and wince.
His stomach area and parts of his chest are mottled with ugly red and purple-bluish bruises.
I make a desperate prayer that it’s just surface bruising and not a sign of internal bleeding.
I kneel in front of him for a minute, resting and trying to decide what to do.
Am I going to kill the guy by trying to get him out?
I don’t know the right answer, but I do know that it could take anywhere from hours to days before a rescue team finds us - if they are even looking, and I just don’t know if the plane will remain safe.
If it shifts more the door could get covered.
What if something starts on fire? If it was me, I’d want to be laid out flat so I just go with that.
I get him out of the seat and drag him out of the plane to the clearing.
I get him settled on the emergency blanket and then clean and bandage his head wound as best I can with the first aid kit supplies.
Once that’s done, I fish around in the supplies until I find the case of bottled water that was in the closet and suck back two of them.
The pounding in my head starts to ease off, letting me think a little clearer.
That’s when I remember that someone was screaming about the moon right before we crashed.
I tilt my head back to look up and that’s when I see it.
The moon. Big as anything and fully visible even though it’s full daylight out.
It also shouldn’t be that big or cracked right down one side of it.
I blink over and over again to try and make sense of it but all that happens is that my stomach rolls and I have to skitter away on hands and knees to one side of the clearing as all the water I just drank heaves out of me as I puke over and over again until there’s nothing left in my stomach.
I make it back to the supplies and slump down.
I sit and slowly sip at another bottle of water while I try to figure this out.
Something has happened to the moon to push it closer to Earth and…
break it? The moon is broken, I’ve been in a plane crash.
What does this mean for the world? Is a broken moon survivable?
What’s happening right now out in the world because of it?
What will it mean for a rescue? Is anyone even going to come looking or will they have their hands full with other things?
These are all questions I have no answer for. I don’t know what’s going to happen or what I should do now. I look over at the injured guy and finally know something. I know he’s not going to make it because he’s stopped breathing.