Girl Underwater (3 page)

C
old.

It hits me like demon's breath, angry and sharp. I wasn't sure what the actual dying part would be like, but this feels all wrong. Everything is too dark. Too noisy. And the cold isn't a dull passing-over from one place to the next; it bites.

I take a breath, my ribs splintering with the effort. Oxygen finds my lungs.

I'm not dead.
I'm not dead.

Icy water is rushing in from somewhere, and it's already past my knees. My toes are numb, and my fingers are getting there. I try to move them, but my pinkie is broken and the others are damn near frozen solid.

Colin.
His fingers are still intertwined with mine, his knuckles whiter than the tray table. I pry them open, but it takes some serious effort. He's got me in a viselike grip.

“Colin.” I shake him hard. “Colin!”

His size made him an easier target for flying debris, but he seems to have avoided a mortal injury: no obvious head trauma, no penetrating wounds. His shirt, though, is spattered with a decent amount of blood. Selfishly, I hope it's someone else's because I want Colin to make it. He
needs
to make it.

“Colin, wake up—”

“Avery?” His eyes drift open. He's conscious; he's alive; he even remembers my name. I squeeze his hand again.

“You were right,” I say, smiling in spite of it all.

He manages a weak grin. “Told you so.”

The whooshing reaches a fever pitch, which spurs me on. I unbuckle Colin's seat belt and help him to his feet. The shift in gravity seems to rouse him. He grips the seat in front of him, straining for balance as the water swirls around our knees and the ceiling bends toward our heads. Our emergency exit row is horribly compressed, from seat to seat and ceiling to floor. A small fire has broken out nearby, consuming the unfortunate souls in the rows in front of us. The cabin looks like it's been put through a meat grinder.

We're barely into the aisle when a soft sob penetrates the chaos. It takes a second for my memory to catch up, to sort through everything that's happened, before recalling the little boys from earlier: the sleepy Indian boy, the toddler in baseball gear, the six-year-old playing on his dad's iPad. The younger two are crying as they cling to their mothers' lifeless bodies. The older boy peers over the seats, his dad's iPad still clutched in his hand. He meets my gaze with startling intensity, his eyes pleading with me to
do something
.

“Can you get the boys?” Colin's voice pierces the roar of rushing water.

The boys.
How can I possibly just “get the boys”? They don't know me, let alone trust me. I will have to physically tear them away from their parents.

“Yes,” I hear myself saying. “Yes, I'll get them.”

Colin twists out of the row, grimacing as he puts weight on his left leg. “I'll check the back. See if anyone's alive back there.”

I nod, too dazed to argue. As Colin heads for the rear, I dodge beams and wires and other debris in an effort to reach the boys. The younger ones tug on their mothers' shirts as I unbuckle their belts and scoop them up. The older boy comes with less resistance, but he refuses to abandon his shattered iPad. I gather them together in the emergency exit row, as far from the rushing water as possible. It's a losing battle. The rear of the plane is almost underwater, the aisle lights flickering into oblivion. We're going to sink—not like the
Titanic
, nose up, but like a giant car, dragged down flat and fast, weighed down by its undercarriage.

“Stay here a minute,” I say to the oldest one.

His eyes widen, the iPad forgotten as it plunks into the water. “No, please!” He grabs my arm, his hand small but strong.

I don't have any experience with little kids. I'm the youngest of four, an afterthought in a family of boys. Babysitting was never my thing. Preschools terrify me; elementary schools give me nightmares. Just looking at this boy makes me feel adrift.

“I'm sorry, but . . .” I try to meet the boy's gaze. “I have to help him.”

With a sigh, he lets his hand fall. “Okay,” he whispers.

He watches me as I head toward the rear, bypassing a dozen decimated rows. The vast majority of passengers are dead. Some are unconscious. A doomed few are trapped, and they scream at me as I try to cut their seat belts or move a piece of debris. Their raw desperation roars in my ears. I can't bear to apologize; I just move on to the next person, hoping his or her luck was somehow better. Because really, the random placement of glass and metal and broken parts feels like nothing more than luck—good luck, bad luck, no luck at all. I know I was lucky. Not because I managed to evade a hulking beam of steel, but because I was sitting next to Colin.

The younger boys are wailing by the time I make my way back to the emergency exit row. The littlest one climbs over the seat, trying to reach his mother. I pluck him out of harm's way and hold him close to my chest.

“Colin, we have to go—”

“Just a few more,” he says, and dives into each row, yanking on seat belts and calling out to unconscious strangers. He pushes aside glass and debris and toys and magazines. Luggage and purses bob in the water like candy apples.

“Colin!” I scream until my throat is raw. The water swirls around my knees, rising at a fervent pace. With every passing minute, it gains on us.

At what feels like the last possible moment, Colin surfaces in the region of row 20. He's got a pregnant woman under his left arm, but she doesn't look conscious. As he lumbers up the aisle to reach us, I fight my way to the front, hoping to God there's a way out up there.

Suddenly, the splashing behind me stops. I turn around and see Colin studying the seats in what used to be the bulkhead, but the front wall has collapsed on top of them. The first row of coach is completely gone.

It hits me at the same time:
Phil.

Together, we move aside as much debris as we can. The skeleton of the plane is exposed, wires sparking overhead. The bulkhead weighs more than a block of cement, but somehow, Colin gets it to move.

Phil is clearly dead. The left side of his skull has a sunken look, his hair matted with blood. His eyes, at least, are closed. Maybe he was asleep when it happened; maybe he died instantly. It's a small comfort, but better than the alternative.

“Jesus,” Colin murmurs. For the first time, he looks shaken. He lets the bulkhead wall shift gently back into place, turning away at the last possible second as Phil's face disappears.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

He nods, dazed. I want to say something else, something more substantive than a standard apology, but there is nothing to be done. Colin knows this as well as I do. And so we move on, toward the front. Toward salvation, if there is any.

The first-class cabin looks like a war zone. In some places, the ceiling has been compressed to almost floor level. Windows cracked, glass floating on the surface. The luxurious first-class seats are almost submerged, along with the passengers strapped into them. Blond hair floats up and around us like jellyfish tentacles. I cover the boys' eyes and push them past the bodies.

Overhead, a series of lights flicker, then die. A low rumble echoes beneath our feet. “Do you think there's a way out up there?” Colin points toward the cockpit.

I don't know. But if I've learned anything from the last twenty minutes with Colin Shea, it's that you have to sound like you
do
know. “This way.” I point to the left. It's impossible to see much of anything in any direction, but up there, the windows look broken and the currents are calm. We're going to need both to swim out of here.

I hand one of the boys to Colin and hold on to the other two. It's much harder exploring the situation with my hands full, but Colin already has the pregnant woman to worry about, and he can only manage so much.

The water continues to rise. Chest, collarbone, neck. I hold the boys above the waterline so they can breathe. One of them cries again for his mom, and I try not to think of my own mother, asleep in her bed. Oblivious.

“Avery, hurry . . .” Colin calls out behind me.

Something in the paneling gives way as the water churns behind us. I kick hard against what remains, expanding a small opening just wide enough for us to swim through. Colin gives a nod, which I take to mean,
You lead. I follow
.

The boys, though, are more reluctant, their tiny bodies tensing in my arms. I try to convince them this is a game, something all the polar bears do. With some gentle coaching, they take a deep breath.
Please let it be enough.

As soon as we're under, I kick harder than I ever have, a powerful dolphin kick followed by a frantic fluttering of my legs and ankles. The boys squirm in my arms. I push off the paneling and rocket upward, though there is no light to guide me, no real sense of up or down. Just instinct.

My lungs are bursting, chest aching. The water is ice, a cold fire that digs in and doesn't let go.

Breathe.

One final kick, and the surface gives way to a sprawling sky. Oxygen fills my lungs. The boys surface a split second later—one of them gasping for air, the other silent and still. I think on this for only a moment before focusing my attention on Colin, on the quiet, black waters where he should be.

“Come on, Colin,” I whisper, willing him to hear me. The moon has passed behind the clouds, shrouding our surroundings in absolute darkness. The air is cold and raw, the shore cast in shadows. There are no lights peppering the distant horizon, no signs of civilization at all. We could be anywhere.

We could be nowhere.

As this thought bleeds through me, Colin finally surfaces. It takes a moment to decide he's real, to accept that we made it out of that plane. He waves at me, affirming the same thing, and we swim for land, side by side, holding on to other people's children. Only when the clouds part again and the moon filters through the haze do I see the trees up ahead, yawning over the lake like ghosts.

On the brink of total exhaustion, my foot hits something. Rocks, pebbles.

Shore.

Colin reaches dry land first, then runs back into the water to help me. He hoists the boys out of my arms, and one of them starts wailing. But the other boy, the one in the vibrant, torn kurta, doesn't so much as stir in Colin's arms.

“Breathe,” Colin says, as he lays him down. “You gotta breathe.” He gets down on his knees and gives the boy a gentle breath, careful not to damage his tiny lungs. I pump his chest with one hand as my father taught me—up and down, up and down—while Colin breathes for him. After two minutes, we switch. The older boy has stopped crying, but he watches us with naked horror.

Then, a shudder. A wet, feeble cough. I scoop him up, stroking his face as his mother would have done. The color returns to his cheeks.

“You're okay,” I whisper. “You're okay.” I rock him for a long time, telling myself that we saved him and three others and that should be enough. But the truth is, it's not enough. Not even close. As the wing sinks beneath the surface, releasing a slow gurgle as it disappears, I can't help but think about the two hundred souls we left behind.

Colin gives my shoulder a gentle shake. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I say, dazed. “Are you?”

He nods, though I'm not entirely convinced this is the truth.

With the boys watching, Colin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a penlight. A surprisingly robust white beam scatters across the water, finally coming to rest on the face of the oldest boy, tall and thin with pale green eyes. He allows the tiniest of smiles.

“Is that a . . .”

Colin nods. “Penlight. Found it in a seat-back pocket.”

“Wow.”

Colin hands it to me, and I shine the light on each of the boys again, just to triple-check they're okay. Then I flash it on Colin, and the air leaves my lungs.

His leg is a bloody, mangled mess, the pant leg shredded below the knee. I lean over it, inhaling a whiff of blood and lake water. He tries to shrug it off, but this is no minor scrape. No wonder he was so dazed after impact. He's lost a lot of blood.

“Can I have a look?” I ask.

“It's fine. I can walk on it.”

“If it makes you feel better, I have a little bit of training in, uh, this kind of stuff.”

“Plane crash injuries?” His wince betrays the hint of a smirk.

“Sort of.” I try to sound as nonthreatening as possible. “Just a quick look.”

He reluctantly offers his leg, which looks like a ragged piece of meat under the light. It's a mess of blood, gristle, and muscle, probably the result of a stray piece of debris. At least the bones look intact—nothing broken, at least not from what I can see. And he didn't nick an artery: no spurts of blood, no high-velocity gushes. I've seen arterial wounds on Take Your Daughter to Work Day—which for me was Traumatize Your Daughter at Work Day. Now I'm starting to understand why my father made me watch all those gruesome trauma activations.

“I can't see how you can walk on this—”

“I can,” he says. “I just did.”

The look on his face ends the discussion. We round up the crowd, encouraging the boys to walk if they can. The pregnant woman, who looks even more pregnant on dry land, is still unconscious. Colin drapes her over his shoulder like he's carrying a heavy burlap sack. He tries hard not to limp, but it's a struggle. With blood oozing from the wound, he finally agrees to let me dress it. I use a scarf that washed up on shore and pray it holds.

The air, at least, is oddly still. The only signs of wind are the rustling of leaves and small waves lapping the shore. The temperature, too, is mild for November, although that can change. I don't know where we are, but I hope it's a small state park a few short miles from suburbia. I hope to God it isn't the Rockies.