DISCLAIMER THINGY:
Still don't own much. Chapter title is a line from Pink Floyd's "Learning To Fly".
Since finding out he was a Necromancer, just a year ago, Vedhix had come to accept that death would be a part of his life in a different way to most people. So when the plane began its headlong hurtle towards the ground, it had come as quite a shock to him - he might actually die! And that was not a pleasant thought! For a moment, he had just sat, too scared to move. Then he had been elbowed by his dreadlocked neighbour, who had airplane-meal pasta all over his already curry-stained shirt.
"Trust me, I've been in worse crashes than this," he had said, taking the brace position. Vedhix had copied, trying hard to ignore screams and shouts of the people around him. There was what sounded like an explosion from somewhere. Moments later, the whole plane had jarred hard. Their movement was definitely slowing, and grinding unpleasantly. Now, it was over - everything was still.
"Ah smeg..."
"What happened?"
"Betty, you O.K.?"
"Help - someone's hurt!"
Vedhix lifted his head cautiously and looked around. The plane, or what was left of it, had crashed into a snowdrift in the middle of a wide, flat area. There were huge, rocky cliffs towering most of the way around them and snow was everywhere. Other people were standing up now and peering around. Many looked disbelieving that they had survived, others looked worried. From the looks of it, the engine on one of the wings had exploded before dropping off - that side of the plane was partially caved in and several windows had been shattered. In the seats there, one teenager was covering her face with blood-smeared hands; another in black short-shorts with mint-green buttons and a white and green belt was leaning over a third, who had been right beside the wing of the plane. Her arm on that side was blistered and burnt, and it looked like she had burns on her face as well, partly hidden by her hair.
Vedhix and his neighbour clambered over the seats and hurried over. The teenager with the burns - Betty, the others called her - appeared semi-conscious; the one covering her face, they could see now, had a gash running from above her left eyebrow across her face to the right corner of her mouth; the one in the short-shorts was limping and another was running her hands through her wavy orange hair, looking distraught.
"We need to move her," Vedhix's neighbour said.
"Who're you?" a teenager who appeared uninjured called out.
"Sme-...oh, uh, Dave Lister," he replied, shoving the back of a seat which, with very little resistance, gave way and toppled backwards. Someone stepped forwards - an earthperson, fairly short with wide, black eyes.
"You go check out the pilots' cabin - see if there's a radio or something," he ordered Lister. "You help move Betty. Someone start shifting these seats. Anyone else injured?" He gestured towards Jack Sparrow, who was fiddling with his moustache and looked up, surprised. Probably still in too much of a state of shock to protest against the earthperson - who introduced himself as Ion - taking charge, most people got to work trying to budge the seats, some of which had come loose in the crash. A boy, a goth of some sort by the looks of him, about fifteen years old, elbowed his way past Tybalt, who was still sitting, bending over with one hand on his face.
"What's wrong with you?" the boy, Craig, demanded.
"Dozebleed," Tybalt replied.
"Tilt your head back and pinch your nose," Craig advised. He turned back to facing down the aisle and nearly had his nose removed when Silver's peculiar masked neighbour stuck his or her long, sharp knife in the air right in front of him and pointed it over to the other side of the plane where the two had been sitting. Craig could see someone lying slumped in his seat, unconscious. The luggage rack had cracked and broken above him and a bag handle was hanging down through the hole.
"Someone else injured over there," he called over to Ion. Guenittia, who had been frantically searching under her seat for something, looked over to where Craig pointed.
"Tchakk!" she swore.
"It's O.K. - he's just been knocked out by something," Vedhix assured her. He didn't appear to have checked Silver's pulse or breathing, but had simply moved his hand over Silver's forehead. But far from seeming relieved, she gasped. Lister, coming back through the door to the pilots' cabin, glanced in the direction Guenittia was staring, and in moments, everyone else was doing the same.
"Smeg!" he exclaimed.
"What the-"
"By my head!"
"Whoa..."
"Hm. Interesting."
"You're a Necromancer?" Guenittia shrieked, and Vedhix quickly turned away, lowering his head. Why did it have to be so obvious? His eyes, which up until now, he had managed to keep hidden from the other survivors (he had gotten through Customs at the airport by telling the officer he had a 'retina inflammation'), gleamed with a strange red light in the middle, where his pupils should have been, clearly telling anyone who might see his eyes that he was a Necromancer. But from the confused looks Guenittia was now getting, Vedhix felt some relief - clearly Guenittia was the only one who actually knew what a Necromancer was.
"It means he can kill people!" Guenittia explained, sounding almost hysterical.
"What? Anyone could kill people if they wanted to," the orange-haired teenager put in.
"It's...it's not-" Guenittia stammered.
"It means," Vedhix interrupted calmly, "that if I wanted to - which I don't - I could take life from or give life to people just by touching them. And it means that my eyes are red. That's all." O.K., so maybe there was a bit more to it than that. Necromancers were supposed to be unbelievably powerful, weren't they? But perhaps it was better for both himself and everyone else that he didn't mention that now. And Guenittia clearly knew no more than she had already tried to tell them. There was a ripping sound behind him. He turned, and everyone else gradually moved back to their various jobs. The unidentifiable person who had first pointed Silver out to them was cutting away the cloth on the seat, and when Vedhix had moved Silver to the floor, he was handed extra makeshift blankets to cover the unconscious boy with.
I would be better wearing that mask, he thought bitterly, grabbing the cloth without thanks.
Across the other side of the plane, the other survivors were clustered around Lister.
"Pilots both dead," he reported grimly, "but there was a radio," and he held up a small black box which, although it looked fairly unimpressive, was the most welcome sight they had seen so far. However, after Lister had twiddled a few knobs, pushed a button, waved it in the air with the aerial extended, hit it on the top several times and eventually opened the back to reveal an empty battery compartment, their hope was rapidly fading. And when Guenittia hunted under her seat and pulled out her own phone, even that was reduced to a mangled, twisted lump of metal and plastic.
"They'll rescue us," Lister assured them. "They'll know we've crashed, and they'll retrace the flight path and see us." But this was little comfort, as the sun was low in the sky and many were already shivering.
"We need to block up that hole at the back," Ion announced. "Get the seat backs - they'll do. And some of the luggage, if you can get it down safely."
"Hey - who made you boss?" Guenittia demanded, rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm them. She had by now recovered from the initial shock of the crash enough to feel that Ion was far too bossy for her liking.
"Ard thou ob a worthy 'ouze?" Tybalt asked stuffily, still trying to stifle his nosebleed and seeming to agree with Guenittia, while Cilla mimicked him under her breath. "Whad is thy vather'z dabe?"
"What's my father's name? Theo," Ion replied, looking slightly puzzled. "Look - we need to block the hole up or we'll freeze in here."
"Rum!" Jack Sparrow exclaimed suddenly. He had been searching under his seat for his hat, which had been dropped in the crash, and when he lifted his hat, his precious flask of rum had been concealed underneath.
"What's that?" the orange-haired teenager, Ham, called.
"Oh...uh...bum!" he replied. "Bum! I said bum! Nothing under here! Bum!" He wriggled out from under the seats, slipping the rum into his pocket, stood up and began smoothing his moustache. Luckily for him, most of the others were too occupied with piling bags and the removed seats in the hole at the back of the plane to pay any attention to him. Not everyone was helping, he observed. Craig was leaning against the wall near where he had been sitting, doing his utmost to look miserable; Cilla was somehow looking extremely busy rummaging through her handbag; Guenittia was taking all the in-flight blankets out from the back pockets of the seats - which was, he supposed, actually helpful; Tybalt was holding a paper napkin from the airplane meals to his nose.
When the hole was sufficiently blocked up so that there was no longer an icy draught blowing through the plane, the group, sixteen in number, gathered in a circle with as many of the in-flight blankets and torn-off seat covers as they could gather in an attempt to keep warm. Guenittia was probably the most impractically dressed of any of the group, and she was suffering badly in the cold, shivering and blowing on her fingers. Craig, on the other hand, wore a long, leather trenchcoat of some sort, covered in little studs and chains, with a long-sleeved top, black jeans and mid-calf high boots.
"Give her your coat," Ion muttered to him, elbowing him.
"I'll freeze!" Craig protested.
"No you won't. She will."
"Can't she have Silver's?" Silver also wore a long, black trenchcoat - but minus the assorted metal decorations.
"Silver's unconscious. He could die if he gets cold now."
"But-" Craig went to complain again, but at a hard glare from Ion, surrendered. He removed his coat and tossed it across the circle to Guenittia, who looked surprised and glanced up at Craig.
"Well?" he said. "You're cold." For a moment, Guenittia peered at the coat, feeling that under normal circumstances, she wouldn't be caught dead in a goth's jacket. But then, these weren't normal circumstances and she could well end up dead. She slipped the coat on, giving Craig a smile that was perhaps a bit too sickeningly sweet to be merely grateful. He wasn't such a bad looking guy...
"We'll be rescued tomorrow," Lister assured them. "It was too late today, but they'll find us tomorrow."
"And if they don't?" Betty put in. She was conscious now, and her burns had been covered with strips of cloth for bandages.
"Then we'll survive," Lister replied. "We're not just going to give up. We'll stay alive until they do find us."
