Authors: Carol Shaben
He knew something very serious had happened. He could taste dirt in his mouth and feel snow compressed inside his nasal passages. It was as if someone had filled a plastic bag, wrapped it around his head and was slowly sucking the air from it. He tried again to reach for support, but his arms were entombed. He sensed one of his hands close to his face, perhaps no more than four inches away. He moved his fingers and felt the icy burn of snow. Then he got it.
I’m buried alive!
Terror gripped him. Trained in avalanche rescue, Scott knew how dire his situation was. Just a month earlier he’d completed an advanced Canadian Ski Patrol course in the Canadian Rockies. What he’d learned was fresh in his mind. If he was to have any hope of survival he needed to try and create an air pocket around his mouth, which might buy him precious time until rescuers found him.
If
they found him. Scott swam his fingers through the dirt until they touched his face. Then he clawed the snow around his open mouth to create a small air cavity. Still, he couldn’t get a full breath. He didn’t know whether it was because his mouth and nose were obstructed or his chest had been crushed. He could hear himself moaning rhythmically, an eerie wheeze he couldn’t control. Somewhere above him others were injured, maybe dying. Maybe dead. He wondered if, like him, they were conscious and facing the horrifying spectre of their own deaths.
“I’m Paul,” Paul said as he reached the two men standing outside the plane. Both had battered faces and seemed stunned, in shock or badly injured—or all three.
“Erik,” said the younger man. His dark hair was matted with blood and Paul could tell just by looking at him that he was badly hurt.
Beside him was an older, darker-skinned man in a long, fancy coat, who introduced himself as Larry. Though he seemed to stare right at Paul, his eyes had a vacant, unfocused look.
“We need to get those people out,” Paul said.
Erik turned to the wreckage, then led them along the plane’s exterior toward the tail. He’d taken only a few steps when his legs rammed into a rough metal outcropping. Clumsily, he clambered over it and advanced toward the rear of the aircraft where he began running his hands up and down the fuselage.
Why can’t I find the windows?
Erik wondered.
His swollen hands bumped into a small, round protrusion where windows should have been. He tried to make sense of what it was. Then he recognized it: the belly light.
Right. The plane is upside down
.
Summoning a mental image of the Piper Navajo, Erik began sweeping his hands down along the curve of the plane’s upturned belly until he found an open window and then the cabin door: closed. He knew there was no way to pry the door open from the outside and stretched himself through the window, straining to reach the safety chain. Pain clawed at his chest and his hands fumbled lamely, but he managed to close his fingers around it, removing the pin and then turning the latch. He pulled the door and swung it outward, creating a small shower stall–sized platform suspended several feet above the ground. Fighting his pain, Erik hauled himself onto it and crept inside.
Paul followed while Larry hung back, worried that, unable to see, he’d be more of a liability than an asset.
Inside the rear of the cabin Erik and Paul crowded together.
“Scott,” Paul called out.
“Where were you sitting?”
“We were in the last two seats next to the door and he was right beside me. On the aisle.”
Erik turned to look at Paul. He could smell tobacco on the man’s
breath and through his one functioning eye he saw Paul’s shaggy mass of long dark hair, thick moustache, and heavy sideburns. With a jolt, he realized that this was the prisoner being escorted by the RCMP officer. Erik also realized that he was the man who’d been shouting obscenities at him after the plane had crashed. Erik’s mouth felt suddenly dry and uneasiness tripped down his spine. The prisoner didn’t yet know he was the pilot, and Erik wasn’t in a hurry to tell him.
Beyond his crippling fear, Scott became aware of scuffling noises directly above him. He heard someone call his name. He inhaled and yelled out, his muffled words filling the tiny hollow of furrowed snow.
“
I have to get out of here now. I can’t breathe!”
“Are you the RCMP officer?” a voice asked.
“Yes.”
He sensed someone trying to dig down to him and then, blessedly, some of the weight that held him down lightened.
Above, Paul pulled two seats that had been raked to the back of the plane and tossed them outside into the snow, followed by a cardboard box, a computer monitor and two briefcases.
“Hold on,” he said, “there’s metal over you.”
“I don’t care. Get me out!”
Scott felt himself on the verge of losing control and fought to stay calm. Like a scuba diver with only an emergency pony bottle of reserve air to last him the long distance to the surface, he understood that he was rapidly depleting his scarce oxygen supply.
Get a grip
, he told himself.
Get a grip
.
“I need help,” Paul called out as he tried to wrench away the metal that hung over Scott like the roof of a crypt.
Erik grabbed it and pulled, but his hands had no strength. Spasms of pain shot through his chest.
“You’re useless,” Paul said, shooing him away.
Erik retreated and lowered himself to sit on the open hatch.
Hearing Paul’s cry for help, Larry scrambled past Erik to help Paul yank on the large piece of metal, but they couldn’t budge it.
Below them, Scott raised his right arm.
“Take my hand,” he said.
Paul grasped an arm in front of him, only to realize that it belonged to another passenger who was pinned from the waist down, twisted in a very bad way, and breathing in long, wheezing gasps.
The person’s jaw was crushed. It felt to Paul like mush or rubber.
“I need a flashlight,” Paul called out.
“I’ve got a penlight in my bag,” Erik answered.
He crawled back inside the cabin and stumbled through it looking for his flight bag. In the mid section, seats had been ripped from their hinges as snow and debris had swept into the cabin. Erik picked his way past the ragged mess, but didn’t get far before a tangle of wreckage stopped him. Beyond the impassable jumble, he could hear a man moaning dreadfully, but Erik couldn’t reach him. Penlight forgotten, he retreated to the cabin door and emerged into the frigid night air.
Working frantically in the aft part of the cabin, Paul quickly realized there was nothing he could do for the passenger with the crushed jaw. But there was still a chance to save Scott. Tripping over Larry in the confined space, Paul suggested he go outside and try to start a fire. Meanwhile, Paul continued scrabbling in the dark until he found the warm flesh of a hand.
“Is this you?” he asked Scott.
“Yes.”
He grabbed tight and tried dragging Scott from under the metal roof, but couldn’t move him. The other passenger seemed to be lying
on top of Scott and every time Paul tried to lift him, he was lifting the passenger, too.
“Stop,” Scott yelled. “You’re ripping my arm off.”
Paul jumped down from the open hatch and crawled through the smashed window next to it. This time he grabbed Scott by his shoulder. As Paul tugged, Scott tried to shift his position, to create wiggle room by tensing and flexing his muscles. Surely he could free himself. His powerful body had never failed him before. Scott worked out for two hours every day and was in the best shape of his life. Even when he had to wrestle some guy three times his size in a back alley and was being walloped, Scott could always bear down and get a little more strength.
He felt hands clawing away the earth around his shoulder and then his torso, and after a moment he was able to rotate his upper body. He swept his free arm through the air above him, wrapped it around the piece of metal and pulled. But his body still wouldn’t release.
Why not?
Scott systematically tried moving his limbs and realized that his left arm was sunk into the ground below him, tethering his body to the earth like a ship’s anchor. He twisted his torso back and forth, trying to loosen the dirt around his left shoulder. Searing pain ripped through it. He lay still for a moment, letting the waves of it subside. Strong hands found him once more, and yanked hard. Again, Scott wrapped his free arm around the solid metal slab above him and pulled. His muscles strained and pain washed through him. Finally, the earth’s grip released him, and he burst free.
“L
eave me for a few minutes,” Scott told Paul after he’d unearthed him. “I need to catch my breath.”
Paul hopped down out of the cabin and went to see about the fire. The reek of airplane fuel was still overpowering, and he wanted to make sure there was enough distance between the fire and the wreckage that they didn’t blow the whole thing sky high. He followed the path Larry and Erik had broken through the scrub and deep snow until he reached a small clearing some 20 metres away from the plane. There, Larry had tromped out a circle of snow and lit the cardboard box Paul had tossed from the plane. The fire was almost out by the time he got there.
It seemed to Paul that Larry and Erik had no mind or that they were really dazed. Wasting no time, he loped back to the plane and grabbed the briefcases, several sticks strewn around the crash area, and a garment bag he spied lying near the wreck. When he returned, Paul placed the sticks on the fire and added the papers from inside the briefcases to the flame. Then he handed the empty cases to Erik and Larry, suggesting they use them as seats. As if speaking to halfwits,
Paul reminded them how important it was to keep the fire going and urged them to gather wood.
Erik slowly removed his winter parka and handed it to Paul. He regarded the man who’d left himself in shirtsleeves as if he was crazy, but accepted the jacket.
“
I’m happy you’re here,” Erik said.
Paul put on the parka. Then he took off back down the trail toward the wreckage.
As Paul’s outline receded, Larry squinted after him. All he could see was a blur of shapes and shadows. He suppressed a feeling of helplessness and listened intently. He could hear boots crunching through the snow, moving in the direction of the plane. Arms outstretched, he shuffled awkwardly forward, his hands groping blindly in front of him. Snow entered his overshoes each time he pulled one foot then the other from the deep snow, and spears of pain lanced his tailbone and ribs.
Larry had advanced only a few metres when a voice yelled, “Hey, you gonna help out or just stand there?”
Larry could hear Paul swearing under his breath and moved toward him until his lacerated shins rammed into a fallen tree beneath the snow and he stumbled. He extended his arms in front of him to brace his fall, and they jabbed into Paul, who was stepping back over the tree. Paul swore loudly.
“Sorry,” Larry said. “I lost my glasses in the crash and I’m blind as a bat without them.”
Paul sighed. “Here,” he said.
Larry could see an arm extended in front of him and grabbed it. He held on as Paul guided him over the tree and down the path. Together they shuffled toward the plane and then veered left into the torn swath of forest cleared by the crash. Stopping near a small stand of broken trees, Paul placed Larry’s hand on the bark and told
him to try peeling some off for kindling, and then crunched away into the darkness.
Shards of jagged wood and bark dug into the tender skin beneath Larry’s nails and pain throbbed through his broken finger. He was clumsily stuffing brittle swatches into the pockets of his overcoat when Paul returned. Asking Larry to hold out his arms, he dropped a pile of branches into them and, carrying his own armload of wood, led Larry back down the path to the fire.
When they reached it, Paul worked quickly, laying branches over the faltering flame, then asking Larry for the bark to stuff between them. Paul was nursing the fire back to life when Erik staggered back with an armload of wood. He glanced at Larry, and then at Paul.
“
Where’s your friend?”
“Who?” Paul answered.
“The cop.”
Larry’s eyes widened and he turned to look at Paul. That’s when he realized that the man he’d been following blindly through the wilderness was a criminal.
Inside the smashed fuselage, Scott sat incapacitated. His head throbbed and he felt dazed and disoriented. The world around him moved strangely, slowly, and he wondered if he was dreaming. It would explain why he couldn’t get to his feet. Something soft and pliable lay beneath him. He poked at it with his finger and it felt fleshy and forgiving. Somewhere close by a man moaned.
Scott struggled to make sense of his surroundings. Strewn around him were rumpled metal, clothing, luggage, papers and broken Plexiglas. He gradually became aware of the distorted features of an airplane cabin: a seat raked back at an odd angle, an armrest hanging
straight down, the oblong opening of an exit hatch. Suddenly, everything became very clear.
He had been escorting a prisoner to face sentencing. The two of them had boarded a small plane in Edmonton that was to fly them to Grande Prairie.
What the hell had happened?
His mind couldn’t connect the dots. He grabbed an outcropping of metal and tried to stand. Not three feet away, the plane’s open hatch beckoned. If he could climb through it, he would be outside. Scott dragged himself upright, bracing against the cabin wall. Then his legs gave out and he collapsed onto the soft mound beneath him. His chest exploded in pain, drowning out coherent thought. He was injured, though how badly he couldn’t tell. Labouriously, he slid down onto the floor and inched along on all fours until he reached the open hatch. He dragged himself outside and sat on the suspended door, but couldn’t find the strength to lower himself to the ground. In the distance, he could see the surreal yellow glow of a campfire. Snowflakes dropped from the sky and the rhythmic moans of a passenger echoed in the darkness.
Moments later a figure seemed to float toward him through the falling snow and a man’s outline came into focus. A voice spoke to him and Scott recognized it as belonging to the man who had pulled him from the wreckage: his prisoner.