-Evacuation

Once dad laid Kim down on the frozen dirt of the field, and as fast as he could in the shape he was in, he made his way back to the broken corpse plane.  Chris was slowly emerging through the yawning gouge in the side of it as he arrived.  Dad helped him down off the front of the wing, and directed him towards Kim, but then he had an idea and told him to wait a second. 

He turned to face to the nose of the plane.  Even in the pitch darkness, he could see that it was completely destroyed; a tangled mass of aluminum and wires and other debris.  The baggage compartment door on top of the nose was ripped wide open and a couple of suitcases had spilled from it and were now laying in a pile on the ground off to the side of the nose. 

He needed something warm and clothes would at least help.  He snatched one of the cases and ripped it open, dumping it over and spilling the contents onto the ground.  He stooped down to gather up all of the clothes he could lay his hands on, then turned to Chris who was standing behind him.

        “Can you hold these?” he asked.  Chris held out his good arm and dad carefully hung the clothes across it. 

“Kim is right over there,” dad said, pointing in the direction of his little girl laying in the dark on the frozen ground. “She’s alive, but she’ll be very cold soon.  If you can, you need to wrap her in these.  Keep her as warm as you can, okay?” 

Then he grabbed the shoulder above the boy’s good arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  “I’ll need your help, son.  Put some of those clothes on, too,” he said.  “We have to stay warm and strong to get out of this.  Go ahead.  I’m going to get your brothers.”

Chris nodded and carefully made his way through the debris and wire over to where Kim lie, disappearing from dad’s sight into the dark and fingers of fog that still clung to the ground.  The clouds overhead were very low and made the scene impossibly black.   

Dad was frustrated.  He needed light, but knew there were no flashlights on board.  He had thought about buying one, just in case, but never did.  One of those things... 

But then he had another thought.  He went back to the pile of items from the bag he had just opened.  They were now laying at the front of the plane in a jumble.  It turned out it was his bag, he realized.  It was only by chance that he had grabbed it first.  He poked around and retrieved his small leather shaving bag from the pile.  He quickly unzipped it, and after some rummaging found what he was looking for. 

He produced a small pen light; the kind the doctor uses to check your eyes.  He had packed it only as an afterthought years ago and had pretty much forgotten about it until that moment.  Now it was the only source of light he had.

He depressed the small pocket clip and the tip illuminated the scratched white and orange paint of what was left of the nose with a small halo of dull white light.   

For a moment, it was the brightest light he had ever seen.   

He swung it across the plane in the vicinity near him and the scope of the damage it revealed was beyond his ability to appreciate right at that moment.  Barely noticing it anyway in lieu of his other concerns, he stooped and waved it around interior of the suitcase until he spotted his old flannel shirt wadded up inside.  He pulled it out and painfully put it on.  It hardly stopped the chilled air at all, put was better than nothing.  Then he turned toward the plane again.

            He waved the tiny light around the jagged opening that had been torn into the copilot compartment.  Something had ripped away the door, taking a large section of the roof and the passenger fuselage with it, as well as the passenger side of the windshield and the connecting fuselage in front of it.  The whole side of the plane had been wrenched wide open, like a jagged clawed monster had grabbed it and torn it away, leaving it a ragged and treacherous orifice – the only way in or out. 

He moved his upper body cautiously in, pulling mom’s seat back upright, and briefly glanced around the cockpit.  It was hardly recognizable as such; it lay completely destroyed and was splattered with gobs of mud and clods of dirt and other debris that had flown around it at impact.  The plexiglass windshield on the pilot side was cracked and jagged as well and many of the instruments were askew and jarred about.  The entire console was dark.  He fiddled with the radio for a few seconds, but it was dead. 

However there were no sparks or smoke from any of the numerous wires and component in the console, so hopefully nothing would catch fire while he was in there.  Considering that, he reached painfully across the seats to flip off the master switch on the console and kill the power altogether, just in case.  There was no indication that the batteries were even functional, but the last thing he wanted was for something to short out and spark as he was stuck in the plane.  The effect of that would be catastrophic should the fuel vapors still hanging thickly in the air be ignited.  The resulting fireball would consume the plane completely. 

As he began to extract himself from the cockpit, he spotted the emergency locator beacon box next to his seat, the ELT.  It had it’s own battery.  A small orange light flashed at him telling him it had been activated by the impact.  That was good.  Even at that moment it was pulsing an signature signal into the air over the emergency frequency.  On the other end, anyone who picked it up would hear the unmistakeable whoop-whoop of an aircraft in distress.  Without radios or any other signaling device, it was the only thing that would tell anyone that we were even there - if they were tuned to the right frequency.

            He squirmed backwards across the seats and pulled mom’s seat forward again, then worked his way back into the middle section of the plane to focus his attention on Rick and me in the very back two seats of the passenger compartment.  We were still concealed in darkness and hidden from view by the high backs of the middle seats.

            He steeled himself.  He did not want to imagine what he was about to find back there.