Chapter 2- Boom!
Gabriel instinctively jerked on the end of his belt and again looked at the illuminated sign. The shaking was brutal and people began to scream as the overhead luggage bins were forced open and bags began to rain down. He clenched his eyes tight and tried hard to control his breathing, all the while telling himself that the violent swinging motion he felt was normal and everything would be fine. He may have been smart, but he never was a stellar liar to anyone, much less himself. His analytical brain informed him that his lungs had been suddenly pushed up further into his ribcage and he had the distinct impression that he was floating in his seat. He steeled his nerves enough to manage a glance out the window just long enough to see the ground fast approaching as the plane rapidly lost altitude.
His breaths were almost panicked gasps now as he once again closed his eyes and thought of his mother. It was one thing for the man who swore to lover her for the rest of her life to one day decide he no longer did and leave. It was quite another to have the boy that you loved so dearly from the moment he was born until he started to become his own man violently and forever ripped from your arms in a terrible accident. Although he didn't want to entertain the thought, he wondered if enough of his body would be left to positively identify and be returned to his grieving mother. He tried not to think of how sad her eyes would be, red and swollen from wailing in mourning the last thing she had to live for. The boy who once held so much promise would now face his death with as much dignity as he could muster. She may never know it, but he would not die screaming if he could help it.
Up in first class, Peter gripped the arm rests and sighed resigned to his fate. He briefly thought of his parents, but he wondered if they would even care that he had died. If he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure they ever really loved him in the first place. Sure his funeral would be lavish as custom would dictate and it would be attended by the friends of his family, most of whom he barely knew. They would all make a good show of being deeply saddened by the death of the quiet young man, however, it would all just amount to empty condolences and crocodile tears.
But Nathan? He may never openly weep at whatever kind of burial they could manage depending on the state of his remains, but Peter knew that his death would scar him permanently. He would no doubt feel somewhat guilty for not preventing it even though he had no say in the matter. Nathan was and had always been his protector, it was a job he did quietly and without expectation of accolade. Thinking of all that he had done from fixing his toys as a child to keeping the bullies away at the school yard even a few years ago to constantly defending him against his parents made him smile. He had been loved and that gave him a sense of peace that allowed him to just let go, satisfied in the life he had lived without regret.
An eerie deafening silence fell on all occupants of the plane as the engines finally cut out and the body of the plane shook and spiraled in a freefall with ever increasing speed toward the earth below. Some people continued to scream, but their mouths opened and moved without sound as parts of the fuselage began to tear away and the cabin instantaneously depressurized, collapsing the eardrums of the passengers.
Gabriel watched with a strange sense of detachment. Suddenly he wasn't afraid to die. The air that rushed through the cabin was freezing cold as the oxygen masks finally dropped like a mass of tangled spaghetti. Although he was finding it harder to breathe, he looked out the window one last time and quickly calculated that given the apparent velocity of the fall, he had only a minute or so left to live. Suddenly, the mask seemed futile in the face of an impact into what looked like dense rainforest at a speed of over 600 miles per hour.
Gabriel had always been a rational man and he saw no need to abandon it at the very end. His attention was drawn to an ever widening shear that appeared approximately 10 rows up that steadily grew until it wrenched the tail section off. A few people were sucked out of their seats by the sudden force of the separation. He watched them fly through the air as though they were mannequins, some of whom lost limbs on the journey. The last thing he remembered was the sight of falling away from the main body of the plane while it continued to break up, leaving a trail of debris like a shooting star across the sky. He momentarily felt like a cosmonaut floating above the earth in a capsule before everything went black.
Peter was aware that something was terribly amiss with the plane as it suddenly pitched forward. He struggled to secure his mask and took a few large breaths. He became dizzy with the sudden influx of oxygen to his brain, but he managed to turn around in his seat just in time to see the back of the plane simply disappear like it was a train car that had been disconnected. His eyes became wide and he sat back in his seat and wished for the end to come. If he had to die, he accepted it, but he didn't want to suffer. He tried to tell himself that he did not just witness the dismemberment of fellow human beings, but the image had been burned into his memory.
As he always did, he found himself wondering who they were and what they did for a living. No doubt some were married and may have had families. He closed his eyes and tried to block it all out, but he couldn't. Those were people who had real lives and loved ones that would be deeply saddened when they got the news. They thought they would see them at the end of the day, but fate saw fit to end their lives in a very sudden and painful way. He took one last look at the now open cabin and became alarmed when he noticed a large tear quickly separate the nose of the plane. Suddenly his section wasn't falling as fast now freed from the much heavier cockpit, although it hardly mattered. He laid his head back on his seat and waited for death to come.