Chapter 3- Alive
Gabriel slowly opened his dark eyes, amazed that he was able to do so at all in the first place. His vision was blurry and he felt numb, but he reached for his belt with trembling hands and managed to unfasten it after several failed attempts. The tail section had landed somewhat on edge with Gabriel's side at the highest point from the ground. Some of what used to be the roof had been torn off about three rows up and he could see light along with what he assumed was dirt. His knees were wedged and he tried to pull them out first by wiggling, then by pushing on the seat in front of him, but he was too weak from shock.
In a daze, he looked to the seat next to him and without much lamentation realized that the middle aged woman had perished. What he assumed should have been her face was bloodied and raw and her hair hung across it in a matted, windblown curtain. He blinked slowly and without much deliberation unbuckled her belt and shoved her out of her seat. She fell to the ground with a sickening thud in a twisted heap. He momentarily felt bad about treating her so disrespectfully, but the brutal fact was that he was alive and she was not.
He lifted the armrest and placed his right hand on the remaining divider between himself and the man that had occupied the aisle. Gabriel took one look at him and vowed not to do a double take. The man had sustained a nearly complete decapitation and it was gruesome. He focused on the task at hand and used his left hand to again push on the seat in front of him to no avail. Exasperated, he used his free hand to push the man's body forward in the seat to take the pressure off. When he drew his hand back, it was covered in blood. He looked at his outstretched fingers almost as though he couldn't comprehend what it was, but really it was because he couldn't bear to think about what he just had just touched. He wiped it furiously on the seat before again pushing.
This time he noticed a sharp pain in his right side, but the seat moved enough to free him and that was all that was important at the moment. However, he had miscalculated his arm's ability to support the full weight of his body against the pull of gravity and he fell toward the ground, bouncing off the middle row of seats and landing painfully on top of his seatmate. He wrapped his arms around his chest and rolled off her gasping and coughing. His ribs and back stung. The pain was so incredible he almost passed out, but he managed to hold on long enough for it to subside somewhat.
When he again opened his eyes, he was staring up at where he had been previously trapped. He was free, and he began to painfully crawl toward the patch of light he had seen earlier. It was no surprise that he had lost his glasses at some point during the freefall, but as he looked up at the interior of the plane, he could see row after row of limp bodies with arms outstretched hanging by seatbelts like dolls in a workshop. "Hello?" He called in the hope of other survivors, but was met with silence. He rubbed his ears to make sure he had regained his hearing and called again but still received no answer. Defeated, he continued to press forward, carefully climbing over each seat until he felt earth and leaves under his palms.
He carefully stood up and immediately swooned. He fought back a tidal wave of dizziness and nausea that almost brought him to his knees. He knew that he had a head injury just by virtue of losing consciousness, but he hoped it was nothing serious. When his head stopped spinning, he surveyed as much of the landscape as he could see without his glasses. It looked like he was in a jungle. To his right was a path of broken trees and gouged earth while to the left the foliage was mostly undisturbed. He assumed the rest of the wreckage lay to the right and he limped off in that direction.
He didn't have to go too far before he could smell jet fuel and feel the intense heat of a fire that lay just a few hundred yards ahead. He was careful to avoid the fires and debris as he approached the midsection of the plane that had come to rest in an upended position, held in place by a thicket of trees. There was just enough room for him to duck inside and look up the interior of the plane. Unlike his section, people reclined back in their seats as though they were simply resting. The injuries were just as bad, but they looked peaceful in comparison to what he had crawled out of.
"Hello!" he yelled with as much air as his ribs would allow. Faintly, he heard a few voices. His heart leaped at the prospect of no longer being the lone survivor, but the challenge would be getting to them. It was more or less a vertical climb to the top along the seats. He knew there was no excuse to be made, if people needed help he had to find a way. "Keep yelling so I can find you!" He instructed. The cabin started to fill with thick black smoke and he feared that soon the entire structure would go up in flame. Thinking quickly, he removed his shirt and tied it around his face to keep him from inhaling the toxic air. He swallowed the pain and began to climb.
He called back and forth to the nearest voice, but soon after they stopped responding. He wanted to look for them, but sifting through the multitude of bodies would take too long, so he opted to search for anyone that could still be saved. He continued to yell, his side increasingly protesting with every breath and stretch. Way at the top he heard a masculine voice call to him and that gave him the will to continue. He climbed all the way to the bulkhead of the first class section and sat on it to rest. "Where are you?" He asked trying to keep the strain out of his voice. It was important not to panic, he told himself.
"Over here!" Came the voice surprisingly close by.
The man began to wave and much to Gabriel's relief he was only one row away in the middle section. With one last effort, he climbed to him and knelt on the backs of the seats one row behind, trying not to think of the bodies that occupied them. "Hey!" he said casually near the man's right ear.
"Hey." Peter laughed. The response didn't make sense, but he couldn't think of anything else to do in such a situation. What else would you say to a mysterious masked man? "I'm kinda stuck," he admitted, "the seat in front of me collapsed and I can't move."
"Sounds familiar." Gabriel grumbled. "Watch your head." He instructed as he climbed higher and placed his feet on either side of Peter's bloodied face.
"What are you doing?" Peter asked trying not to look straight up at Gabriel's splayed form. It just seemed strange.
He heard a click before he responded, "If we are going to get you out, I have to get this guy out of his seat. His weight is pinning you in." With that, Gabriel grabbed the man's shoulders and pulled with all of his might. He grinded his teeth and growled as the pain reached a fevered pitch. Finally the man slid backwards and fell to the bulkhead, but not before Gabriel lost his balance and went with him.
"Hey!" Peter shouted when Gabriel gasped and moaned. "Dude, what happened? Are you ok?" He tried to turn in his seat, but his painful shoulder prevented him from it.
At first there was no response. Finally, he heard hitched breathing and a weary, "Yeah, I'm ok." Thankfully the fall was a short one, but he couldn't take much more.
Peter was relieved when he felt Gabriel pull on the back of his seat to climb into his field of vision. The smoke grew thicker and Peter began to cough.
"Take of your shirt and tie it." Gabriel said gesturing to his own configuration. Although it worked well enough to breathe, it did nothing to keep his eyes from stinging and he knew they were running out of time. "Can you climb down on your own?" He asked.
Peter was caught off guard. "How…how far is it?" He asked in a panic. His legs probably wouldn't take his weight for very long and then there was his shoulder.
Gabriel looked back down the interior, but could no longer see the ground for the smoke. "Kinda far." He admitted. He was disappointed when Peter said he didn't think he could and that sent Gabriel's brain scrambling for a solution. "Shit." He muttered again looking down and then back at Peter.
His eyes brightened when he noticed what Peter was wearing. The current trend in fashion was a style called grunge, which involved layering several shirts. He was wearing a black Nirvana shirt over a long sleeve white thermal and a plaid shirt was tied around his waist. While not something he would wear, Gabriel found it incredibly useful.
"You are going to have to trust me." Gabriel warned. "I won't have time to explain everything. Take off your flannel and your t-shirt. Wrap your face with the black one and give me the other. When you are done, try to get yourself over to the aisle."
Peter did not hesitate to do as he was asked. The guy did come all this way to save him and he seemed to know what he was doing. He tied his Nirvana shirt around his face and was amazed at how well it worked at filtering the air. He slowly but surely got himself almost over the edge of the last seat facing the aisle. Then he watched as Gabriel positioned himself so he could wrap the center of his flannel around his left ankle twice and then he tied both of Peter's wrists with the loose ends.
"I am going to climb us both down." Gabriel announced with some hesitation. "All I want you to do is slide along the floor and stay clear of the seats." Peter nodded, but he was not looking forward to hanging by his wrists all the way. It took a few seconds for them to get positioned correctly, but when they managed to align, Gabriel quickly used the legs of each seat as a ladder and hustled down as fast as he could. He didn't tell Peter, but his ribs could barely stand the stress of his own slender frame and now he had the weight of two men hanging.
It seemed like a matter of seconds until Peter's feet hit the ground and Gabriel slid down to rest in a sitting position. At least that was what Peter thought. But when Gabriel didn't move or respond when he thanked him, he unwrapped the shirt from the man's ankle and moved close to open one of his eyes. "Shit, dude." He muttered when all he saw was white.