Rating: T for now.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hannah Montana. Based on the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
Note: Hello friends :) So I don't know what's up with FF lately as I haven't gotten a single email about reviews (although I do see on the site that people are posting them), and apparently some of you did review for the last chapter but they disappeared. Must be some kind of strange FF temporal paradox that results in several reviews and emails never happening. Hopefully everything is fixed and you guys all get this chapter when I post it!
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I'm going to die, Lilly thought, her brain screaming it in the sudden silence. Her mind was blank except for this horrid thought, and a sickly chill crept over her body. Oh God, I'm going to die. And then a flash of her best friend, smiling at her as they sat at Rico's and listened to Oliver tell another lame joke flew across her mind.
Miley. She must do this to save Miley.
Lilly wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and shook away her thoughts of death. She reached trembling hands that felt oddly detached from her body and grabbed the wheel, holding the nose of the plane down. The plane went into a fast glide, quickly losing altitude, and Lilly was dimly aware of the yelp that came from the back of the plane. Miley is alive, and she's going to stay that way.
A silent alarm went off in Lilly's head as she suddenly noticed that she couldn't see any lakes. Ever since they had started flying over the forest, all she had seen were lakes dotting the green carpet of trees below. Where were the damn lakes! Far out on the horizon she could see lots of them, glittering blue in the late afternoon sun. But that didn't help her. She desperately needed a lake right in front of the plane NOW, yet all she saw through the wide windshield of this damn plane were green fucking trees, trees that would be the death of her. Of them.
Lilly's mind raced. She could attempt to turn the plane around. Surely they had flown over a lake closer than those she saw on the distant horizon. But she was fairly certain that if she turned the plane she couldn't keep it flying. They would drop faster towards the thick canopy of evergreen, and faster towards imminent death. The cold panic started creeping in again, her stomach tightening into knots and her breath began coming in short bursts as all feeling began to flow out of her body.
A faint glitter out of her right eye managed to catch her attention and she turned her head, feeling as though she were moving in slow motion. There, out of the right windshield was a lake! It was shaped like an L, almost as if it were calling her name. Adrenaline surged through her body as she became aware of what she now must do. The plane was almost aiming at the long part of the L, she just needed to turn a little to the right. She swallowed and held her breath as she gently pushed the right rudder pedal, and the nose moved over.
However, the maneuver had meant a sacrifice in speed, and the lake was now above the nose. They were headed for the trees once more. Lilly slightly pulled back on the wheel, bringing the nose back up, and once again dramatically decreasing the planes speed. Fuck. The plane almost seemed to stop and stagger in the air. Please don't drop out of the sky, Lilly prayed, closing her eyes and sending a silent plea to whomever, if anyone, was listening.
The controls of the plane became very loose in her hands due to the lack of speed. Panicked, Lilly pushed the wheel back in. Their speed once again increased, but once again the windshield was filled with nothing more but trees. The lake was once again above the nose and far out of reach.
Time seemed to stop, suspending everything in animation. For three or four seconds, the world hung around Lilly and the plane. It was still flying, but slowly. Too slow. They would never reach the lake. Damn it! They had been so close! Tears stung Lilly's eyes as she looked out the side windshield and saw a small pond. A large animal, what looked to be a moose, stood out in the water. It all looked so still, the pond and the moose and the trees, as the plane slowly coasted only a few hundred feet off the ground. It looked like a picture.
Then everything happened at once. Trees took on detail and no longer looked like a carpet of green. Lilly's entire field of vision was filled with green, and she knew they were going to hit. They were going to hit they trees, and they were to die. She reached her hand awkwardly behind the seat, blindly searching for Miley and felt her cold shaking fingers grasp onto Lilly's. So this was it.
But their luck held and just as they were about to hit the tree canopy, it dropped away into an open channel of fallen trees, leading like a runway into the lake.
The plane was now committed to crashing and it fell into the wide open space like a stone. Like dead weight. Lilly used her free hand to ease back on the wheel, trying to slow their speed but the nose of the plane came up to far and she found herself staring at a wall of trees instead of glistening blue water.
Before her next breath, before she even had time to process anything, the plane hit the trees. Lilly's heart leapt into her throat at the same second her stomach hurtled through the floor. People always say that accidents happen so fast and you never know what hit you. In Lilly's limited experience, that was bullshit. One, she knew exactly what hit her. And two, every terrible sound, every sickening smell, every glimpse of horror and beyond was paraded before her in a morbid show all done in slow motion.
First, she was aware of a horrendous wrenching as the wings caught the trees at the side of the clearing and ripped back, breaking just outside the main braces. Dust and dirt blew off the floor into her face so hard she thought there must have been some kind of explosion. She was momentarily blinded and slammed forward in the seat, so violently that she thought she would tear in two. Her head flew forwards, smashing against the wheel and the taste of warm blood filled her mouth, making her choke.
Then there was a wild crashing sound, the ripping of metal, and the plane careened sideways to the right, heading for more trees and not the lake. Shit, this was not supposed to happen! They needed the 'softness' of the water to cushion their crash down to earth. Instead, the scent of copper, gasoline, and fresh pine trees filled her nose.
Like Dorothy on her trip to Oz, she watched in confused fascination and barely contained horror as objects around her took flight and the ground and trees came rushing at them too quickly. The headset flew and slammed against the dash, and Lilly was having a hard time telling up from down as the plane spun into the trees. Somebody was screaming, screams of fear and pain and she did not know if it was her or Miley. Or was it in her head? Then the pilot's large flight log exploded against the side of her face and neck, making everything go fuzzy and millions of stars danced across her vision. It was still daytime outside, wasn't it?
Her seatbelt cut into her, stealing her breath. "Miley!" she screamed, but the sound was lost in the chaos of crunching metal and shattering glass. Tree branches lashed against the plane, snapping off and punching through the windows like lances in search of a victim.
Oh, God, she was going to die and she wasn't nearly ready. She couldn't come to terms with it, even though the past few hours should have prepared her for this. But she wasn't ready for the end. She didn't want to die. She didn't want Miley to die.
Then everything came to an abrupt halt, her brain close to short-circuiting as it attempted to register the fact that they weren't spinning anymore…and that she was hanging upside down by her seatbelt. Like a rag doll, her arms dangled loosely over her head. Lilly's eyes fluttered open slowly and she was hazily aware of a hot liquid running down her face and through her hair, dripping onto the ceiling of the plane.
The plane creaked loudly one last time and then there was no sound except Lilly's own ragged breathing. She held her breath, willed her body to stop quaking, afraid that the slightest sound or movement from her would send them on another trip down through the trees. Then she began to choke on her own blood. She coughed a few times, trying to spit and rid her mouth of the acrid taste.
It was hard to breathe and she couldn't tell if it was because of the seatbelt digging into her waist or if she'd done something horrible to her lungs. Then she realized how quiet it was. Oh God, what if she's dead? "M-M-Miley," she screeched, her voice panicky and high. "Miley!"
A warm hand suddenly cupped her cheek and Lilly jumped, the plane moaning again, the sound of metal scraping against metal sharp in her ears. "Shh…It's all right. I'm here," came Miley's accent-laden voice.
Lilly had never been so glad to hear her best friends voice and she nearly cried.
She reached out a shaky hand, her eyes meeting Miley's. The girl looked like she'd been run through a garbage disposal. Her clothes were torn and soaked with blood in places, and her beautiful face had a dozen small cuts that were all sluggishly bleeding, some with bits of pine needles sticking in them.
Miley leaned toward her and the plane suddenly tilted to one side. She fell sideways and Lilly screamed out in pure terror.
"It's okay. It's okay," Miley murmured after they stopped moving, her eyes wide with fright. "We need to do this carefully." She glanced around, inching her way closer on her knees.
Lilly's stomach twisted and she spat out more blood. She took a few deep breaths to still her pounding heart. "How bad are you hurt, Miles?" She asked shakily.
"I'm…" There was a pregnant pause. "I'm alive."
Lilly let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and tried to ignore the throbbing in her head. "That good, huh?"
Again, there was no quick answer, but Lilly could feel a hand on her seatbelt, struggling to release it.
Lilly blinked away some tears mixed with blood and glanced toward the front of the plane. The windshield was smashed in with branches, and so many other crisscrossed tree limbs and mangled metal obscured her vision that she couldn't tell where they were or where the lake was. She felt the tears coming full force now, and a sob escaped the back of her throat.
Tender fingers wiped the moisture from her eyes. "Shh…we need to get you out of here before we crash to the ground, and I need you to help me." She wrapped her hand around the buckle of her seatbelt and jiggled it a few times, but nothing happened.
"I think you're going to have to cut me out," Lilly groaned. "It's stuck."
"Crap. Okay. We need a knife or somethin'. Shit, you're not supposed to have knives on planes, are you?"
Lilly was taken aback by the swearing that left Miley's mouth. It sounded foreign and unnatural coming from her lips. She could count on one hand how many times she'd heard Miley swear, in fact, on one finger. She was too pure, or too perfect, for anything foul to touch her. "Hatchet," Lilly rasped as she began feeling more dizzy from her upside-down suspension in the plane. Her head was pounding now.
"Right. I'll be right back."
It took what seemed like forever, but she finally returned with the hatchet. She pinned Lilly with a serious look tinged with sympathy. This was not only going to be scary as hell, it was going to hurt. "I'm going to start attempting to cut you out, but I'm not sure how well this is going to work. You ready?"
Already dizzy and disoriented, Lilly tried to brace her hands against the ceiling. "I don't want to hit you when I fall."
"Hey." Lilly glanced up into Miley's eyes that were staring into hers with sizzling intensity. "I'm not givin' up on you if you don't give up on me. All right?"
They stared at each other for what felt like a thousand years, but couldn't have been more than a few seconds. "All r-right." God, why was she still spinning? "But -"
"You won't fall on me, Lil. Just promise."
Lilly girded herself for the pain that was sure to follow. "Please don't let me kill us," she mumbled. "Okay. I promise."
She was aware of the sawing and jerking, the sound of the strap tearing, and a few short strokes later Miley cut through the seatbelt. Lilly did her best to cushion her fall but ended up landing right on her head anyway. Her entire body exploded in abject misery.
The plane rocked back and forth, creaking like an old boxcar moving down the track, and she held onto Miley for dear life. When it finally stopped, she was acutely aware of her shoulder screaming in pain, and there was a good chance she'd wet her pants from relief.
Miley blinked a few times, looking around them as though she was surprised they were both still alive. "We're almost out of here."
"Almost," Lilly whispered, even more surprised than Miley. She flitted her gaze around and was shocked by the utter devastation. She couldn't even tell this was a plane anymore. She desperately wanted to roll her aching shoulders but was afraid of the extra movement. Just don't think about it. "Now what?"
Lilly didn't know how far up in the trees they were, and her mind was suddenly very tired. She couldn't make any more decisions. Her brain was a cloud as she stared at Miley, hoping for guidance.
"We miraculously get outta the plane." Miley gave a bleak, but determined smile. She motioned towards the door that had been wrenched free during the crash. "Let's go."
Lilly slowly made her way on hands and knees, making sure not to jar the plane in any sudden movements and send them plummeting to their death. It was a torturously slow affair but she finally found herself grasping onto pine branches for dear life as she watched Miley climb safely out of the plane. Lilly guessed this is where being a tomboy and growing up climbing trees came in handy as she gradually began climbing down the tree, limb by limb. She was too terrified to glance below her to see how far they had to go and she was also worried about Miley's clumsiness when it came to any sort of physical activity. Like climbing trees…not that they'd done any such thing since they were 12 years old. And now would not be the time to fall to her death, not after they'd somehow survived the crash and made it this far. So she continued her snail's pace down the tree, always keeping one eye on her friend and one eye looking out for the next branch below.
After what seemed like forever, Lilly's feet slammed into solid ground at the base of the tree and she stumbled from underneath it and away from the plane, wobbling along the shore of the lake. Her legs soon buckled beneath her and she felt her face hit the ground, the coarse blades of grass prickling her smooth delicate skin. A loud groaning filled her ears and she warily glanced up. Miley sat, wide-eyed and stared as the plane tilted in the trees, snapping branches as it moved. Lilly watched in slow motion as the plane they had just managed to escape from fell through the trees, out onto the lake. She felt droplets of water land on her, heard the loud splash and a strange gurgling noise. And then everything came to a stop. She didn't see anything, she didn't hear anything, as a color came across her vision that she had never seen before. It exploded in her mind with the pain and she was gone from it all, spiraling out into nothing.
Her last thought, as the nothingness consumed her, was thank God Miley was alive.
She wasn't alone.
Questions, comments, or concerns? I decided not to have them crash in the water, like the original. I'd thought about Miley being unconscious and Lilly having to drag her out of the plane and water, but instead took some inspiration from another favorite story, which I also stole some dialogue from :) (Stranded, by Blayne Cooper. Read it. You'll fall in love with Nora like I did). This was a hard chapter for me, as it was the first one to break away from the original story a bit, but I like my decision. I hope you do too.