Departure(8)

And then I’m running, following Nick into the water toward the plane, which is dropping steadily now toward the lake’s surface. Three men and a woman stand in the aisles there, staring out, watching, waiting for us.

The water is numbing. With each step I take into the lake, I lose a little more feeling. Ten feet in, I’m up to my chest. I grit my teeth and plow deeper, pumping my arms, icy water splashing on my face and hair. From here the plane looks miles away, though it can only be another forty feet. Nick and the men are pulling away from me, and I fight to keep up.

One of the younger guys reaches the plane first. Carefully, avoiding the twisted metal tendrils that reach into the water, he climbs into the lower half of the fuselage, where the checked baggage is stored. He turns to help the next swimmer and the next, until all four guys are crouched there in the dark mouth of the plane, almost level with the water now.

I reach the jagged opening last, and Nick’s outstretched hand is waiting for me. His fingers clamp onto my forearm. “Grab my arm with your other arm.”

Two seconds later I’m crouching beside them in the lower half of the plane, drenched head to toe and colder than I’ve ever been in my life, my body shaking uncontrollably, every shiver sending waves of pain from my midsection and shoulders. The cold feels like it’s eating me from the inside out.

I feel hands around me, running up and down. Mike, the twentysomething guy assigned to my aisle, is rubbing my shoulders and back, trying to dry and warm me. I can’t look at him. I just stare at his green Boston Celtics T-shirt. How is he not freezing to death?

Nick calls to the people on the bank, telling them to extend the lines. They surge forward into the water, holding hands. The white points of light from their life vests stretch apart as they go deeper into the lake. As the line of people flow away from the fire, their faces disappear in the dark, the tiny lights the only indication they’re there. The two lines of light remind me of a runway at night, pointing this wrecked hull of a plane to the fire, to salvation. We can do this, I tell myself.

The men in the passenger compartment above reach their arms down, and I feel hands grasping me, boosting me up. I watch wide-eyed as I pass a little too close to the razor-sharp shreds of metal that protrude from the end of the floor.

The shock and ache of the water is gone now, and I wonder if that’s a good thing. But I can still feel my body. I still have control.

I stand for a moment, letting my eyes adjust. It’s dark here, even darker than I expected. I don’t know if it’s all the people, but it feels cramped, airless, like a mine shaft. Faint beams of moonlight filter through the oval windows like lanterns guiding us down to the watery abyss at the end of the aisles. The tail’s already filled with water, as Nick speculated.

Those people are already dead. We can’t help them, but we can save the others.

Through the lingering pain of the crash and the numbing cold of the lake, I feel my nerves rising. I can do this. I have to. I try to remember Nick’s speech, to focus on the key phrases, running through them in my mind, pumping myself up.

If we don’t go get those people, they will never see or talk to their loved ones again.

No one else is coming for them. It’s us, here and now, or they die.

The floor below us is sinking faster, leveling off, but it still slopes a little, a ramp straight back into the darkness.

At our feet, bodies lie two and three deep in the aisles. Women, children, and a few men, most of them slim. Maybe half have life vests on. Not good. There must be thirty people here. My eyes have adapted to the darkness, and I can make out more of the plane now. There’s one row of business, all seats empty, then a dividing wall, and two sections of economy with three blocks of seats—two on each side, five in the middle. I scan the rows that face us. My god. People everywhere. Over a hundred. There’s no way. How long do we have? A minute? Two? Once the water starts pouring into the lower half of the fuselage, it will fill fast, reaching a tipping point past which the water will pull it to the bottom. We can’t save them all. Maybe—

Nick’s voice snaps me back to the moment. His face is expressionless—no sign of concern, no hint of panic. He sounds like a dad on a holiday camping trip, calm, to the point. He quickly assigns responsibilities to Bill and the seven other people helping inside the plane. Two men will stay at the end of each aisle, passing people with life vests out to the lines in the water. The other four conscious survivors will gather and place life vests on people before they go out.

“Under no circumstances are you to leave this plane. We need your help.” Nick points to the unconscious people in the aisles. “They need you. They’ll die without you. Got it?”

Nods all around. “Go. Work quickly.”

Mike takes off ahead of me, bounding over bodies, stepping on them, crushing them. I take a tentative step and lose my footing, catching myself on the nearest seat.

“Go, Harper! You can’t worry about stepping on them,” Nick shouts, and I’m running, every step a cringing mental effort. Finally my feet hit the carpeted aisle, and I race forward. Mike’s got the three seats on the interior, I have the window seats. He’s passing me, a body thrown over his shoulder, before I even reach my first aisle.

Water on my feet. I’m splashing forward, and I swear the water’s colder here. I had thought the angle would be different, the pool of water would only be at the back, but it’s like wading into a zero entry pool; with each step the icy water creeps up my legs another few inches. Where to start? I’m in water up to my waist now. Only the heads of the passengers rise above water here. Can they still be alive? Nick’s words echo in my head again: anyone underwater has already drowned. But their heads are above water. I push forward, to the last row where the water is still just below their chins.