Monstrum (5 page)

“Crash position!” echoes Gray, smacking me on the arm to make sure I've got it. “Pass it on!”

We've got it. The mantra rises up all around me, battling with the sobs and Espi's cries for her mother, and everyone I can see rests their torso on their legs and protects their head.

I shake with a fear so powerful that my teeth begin to chatter. I cannot make them stop, and when I try to clench my jaw, I catch the inside of my cheek and taste the coppery tang of blood.

This is it, isn't it? I am going to be dead five minutes from now. We all will.

My mind focuses on two things:

My seat is a flotation device, and there is one row between me and the door.

We fall and fall. The descent lasts for so long that I can almost convince myself that God has changed his mind and this is not happening after all.

And then, quite suddenly, someone in the cockpit begins shouting. “Pull up!
Pull up!
”

A miracle happens. The plane's nose tips up. Resistance drags the plane, making it shudder and slow. The engine goes silent. We are gliding. Gliding. Gliding. I think we've leveled off and may be about to climb again, and I feel one breathless spasm of hope.

But the plane's nose touches down, and I'm a crash-test dummy, my head slamming into the seat ahead of me and my limbs tangling. There's a backlash as my body tries to keep up with the water's grip on the plane.

My brain is a Ping-Pong ball inside my skull.

The water grabs the plane, slowing it down, and I hear the distant but distinct sound of shattering glass, which means that the water will soon be inside the cabin with us—no. The water is already on its way, lashing my face as it streaks toward the back of the plane. It's needle-sharp with cold and smells like salt and seaweed, rot and filth.

It is determined to destroy the plane.

The plane must have a soul, because it fights back. I feel the shudder of aluminum all around me. The creaking groan as metal bends and twists. The violent pops of failing bolts and rivets.

And above it all, I hear a noise that my ears don't recognize. Raw and primitive, it sounds like an enraged elephant has mated with a screeching eagle and spawned a T-Rex.

Even as I unbuckle my seat belt and try to get my feet beneath me, I know that I don't want to meet the creature that belongs to that sound any more than I want to stay on this plane while it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

My fear has me in a stranglehold, but my anger is stronger. And I am royally pissed off even though I've spent years in therapy trying (and often failing) to manage my anger. I'm only seventeen years old. I have a lot more living to do.

I am
not
dying on this plane. No, sir. Not today.

“M
aggie!” I call. “An? Answer me!”

“We're here.” Maggie touches my leg, and I almost collapse with relief.

“You okay?”

I think about that and try to inventory any injuries I may have, but I'm too wired with shock and adrenaline to be able to feel most of my body. My brain, though, feels slow and sludgy, probably because I just banged it on the seat. It feels as though all my neurons have to fight their way through a layer of peanut butter before they can start firing. But, on the other hand, I'm standing up and I can still talk, and that's probably as good as it's going to get for the near future.

“Yeah,” I say. “You?”

“Yeah.” That's An. “Sammy?”

A round of violent coughing comes from Sammy's direction.

“Sammy!” cries An.

“Yo,” answers Sammy hoarsely. “I'm at the door.”

“Well,
OPEN IT
!” screeches An.

“I'm trying,” says Sammy.

“We have to get out of here,” Maggie mutters, standing beside me.

“I know,” I say grimly. This is not the time for sitting quietly while we let the adults take charge and formulate a plan. What if they're too busy trying to keep themselves alive to come for us? No, it's up to us to save our own butts. And first things first: get out of the plane. Now.

In the utter darkness, though, it's not that easy.

For one thing, the aisle lights are gone even though they're supposed to glow in emergencies. The exit lights are also gone. I guess they're only helpful when the plane's cruising along at thirty-five thousand feet and there's nothing but sunny skies ahead.

To make matters worse, icy water is surging up around my ankles now. It's squelchy and slimy inside my gym shoes and doesn't want to let go of my feet long enough for me to take a step into the aisle. Not that I could get there anyway. A seething wall of bodies has materialized out of nowhere, blocking me, but I focus on my goal:

If I can make it to the other side of the row of seats in front of me, to Sammy and the door, I live.

Maybe.

My ears are overwhelmed with the sounds of desperation: screaming, sobbing, moaning, the splash of that foul water, praying, pounding, as though someone, somewhere, is trying to open a door.

“Jesus, please,” shrieks a voice from the back. “Don't let me die like this. Don't let me—”

“Mami!” It's Espi, her voice raw and shrill. “Help me, Mami!”

“Esperanza.” Her mother's voice is calm and controlled amid the chaos. “I'm coming. You hang on for me, okay?”

“Mami!” Espi is choked with sobs. I wonder if she is capable of absorbing her mother's instructions.
“Mami!”

“Espi!” I shout when her despair overwhelms my ears. Fumbling my hand through the space between the seats, I reach for her shoulder and squeeze it. She's shaking like she's been clamped inside one of those paint mixing machines at the hardware store. “Mami's coming, okay? Right now I need you to get unbuckled and stand up so we can get out of here. I'm not trying to do a
Titanic
and sink to the bottom of the ocean, okay?
Espi!
”

“Okay,” she says weakly, and I feel her body shudder and tighten as she begins to move.

“Okay.”

“Macy?” I say.

A moan answers me. She's either shocked or has an injury of some sort.

“Espi!” I bark, and the words come out of me as though I've had a long and distinguished career as a drill sergeant. “Get Macy, okay? You're in charge of her. That's your job. Okay?”

“Okay,” Espi answers.

“Get out of the way!” someone else shouts, and the mass of bodies in the aisle surges, as though a full-fledged stampede is one misplaced elbow away from becoming a reality. “You have to move! You have to move!”

The plane tips to the left, setting off a new wave of hysteria. It's unsteady, rising and falling with the ocean's tempo and doing a very poor job of impersonating a boat.

Inside me, the repressed panic inches higher. My mouth is open, sucking at the air, but none of it makes its way into my lungs. Maybe that's a good thing, though. Lack of air is the only thing keeping me from shrieking.

And the water is now up to my knees.

“Move, people!” I shout at these faceless fools, losing control and nudging at one of the bodies blocking me. “It's not that hard! Haven't we all been trained to walk calmly and quietly in single file since we were in kindergarten?”

“Bria!” calls a male voice that sounds like it's not too far away.

Oh, thank God. “Gray?” I answer.

“Hang on. I'm coming.”

“Where's Carter?”

“Here,” Carter says.

The plane tips again with an ominous creaking of metal, as though something important, like the entire fuselage, is about to give way. I am desperately considering our options and wondering whether we have enough room to climb over the seat and into Espi, Macy and Sammy's row, where the exits are, when something wonderful happens.

“Hey!” someone in the aisle yells. “There're more exits in the back! Let's try one of those! Come on! Come on!”

And a big chunk of the group breaks away. Like lemmings, they hurry toward the rear of the plane, opening up just the space I need to work my way into the aisle, with Maggie and An right behind me.

Someone grabs my arm with the unyielding force of a manacle and yanks me forward.

“This way,” Gray says.

I reflexively reach back for Maggie's hand and tug her along with me.

“Get An,” I tell her. “Don't let go.”

“I won't,” Maggie says.

“Wait!” I cry, a snippet of safety info coming back to me just in time. “We need our seat cushions. Grab one! Maggie, An—grab them!”

We all fumble for the cushions and I keep a hand on Espi's seat back so we don't somehow lose our place and get lost in the bowels of the dying plane. Finally, I have my cushion and my arms woven into the straps, and it's time to move again.

The plane rocks precariously, and we wobble as a unit, bumping into seats and struggling to keep our footing as we edge up the aisle to the exit. I have the terrible feeling that if one of us goes down, we'll all go down, and if we all go down, we'll never get back up. So I keep Maggie's hand in an iron grip.

A frantic head count is running inside my head, looping endlessly:

Maggie, An, Sammy, Gray, Carter, Espi and Macy. I've got to do whatever I can to make sure all of us get out of this godforsaken plane. Nobody gets left behind. Maggie, An, Sammy—

“Sammy!” It's An again. “Did you get that door open yet like I told you to?”

“I'm working on it.” Sammy sounds like he's got his teeth gritted as he struggles with the door.

“You are so
useless
!” says An.

We make it into the open area between the first row of seats and the galley just as the lever squeaks. A strip of relative light opens up at the edge of the cabin door, bringing a stronger whiff of that putrid water smell with it. I gag, and some involuntary reflex floods my mouth with saliva. My stomach wants to heave, but I check it, because now isn't the time to have a delicate digestive system.

With the additional light from outside, I can see Sammy's thin outline as he manages to push the door out a bit more. Gray and Carter hurry over to help him, and the three of them put their backs into it and slide the door to one side, opening up a space that's wide enough for people to get through.

Unfortunately, this good news is severely tempered by the fact that water races through the opening and floods over my knees, threatening to knock me down. But then the plane dips into a trough, and a bunch of it surges right back out again.

We can't keep riding the waves in the plane. We'll be flooded and drowned in no time.

Keeping my voice calm takes a monumental effort, but I manage. “Does anyone see a raft? We need to get out of here. Like, now.”

“Hang on,” says Gray. “I think this might be—”

“Don't pull that now, you idiot!” Carter bellows. “Shit, man!”

A loud hissing joins all the other sounds, and a huge yellow thing springs to life from some compartment I can't see and begins to take shape. Meaning we've got to act fast. Even my panic-dulled brain knows that a life raft won't do us much freaking good if it's trapped on the plane with us.

“Get it out of here!” I yell.

We move together, knowing that if that thing inflates all the way, we'll be screwed in a way we weren't just a second ago. The boys keep working on the door and slide it all the way open and out of the way. The girls, meanwhile, crowd around the raft—it feels nice and sturdy, thank God, but it's not heavy, just unwieldy—and heave. Either the thing doesn't want to move or the water wants it to stay on the plane. Whatever. It feels like we're working against King Kong on the other side of a battering ram.

“Push it to the left,” shouts An.

We do, and that does it. The raft slips most of the way out the door, taking An, who's hanging on for dear life, with it. One minute she's there, and the next there's air, sky and black water, but no An.