The plane was losing altitude, clouds streaked upwards past the cabin windows.
The oxygen masks never dropped.
The alarms sounded, passengers secured their seat belts, looking expectantly up at the hatches that never opened. The sputtering cries of the burning engines drowned out most of the panicked shouts. Within seconds, people began clawing at the square hatches, still sealed tight. The sobbing of desperation ran into the sound of the engine in a hellish roar.
Fingers streaked and flecked with blood, fell limp as the air thinned in the hurtling descend. Confusion seized passengers, some fumbling uselessly with their seat belts, others feebly continuing reaching for the unyielding masks. The crew in the cabin had strapped on emergency backup masks, attempting to distribute others amongst the semi-conscious passengers.
Katie had been the first fitted with a mask, as soon as Angela had noticed it hadn’t dropped automatically. She had unstrapped the child travelling alone, and picked her up out of the seat, putting her in a crew seat with a mask on the main supply. The rest of the crew were scrambling to distribute the portable backup masks between the passengers. They wouldn’t keep a person conscious, but the oxygen soaked filter should keep them alive.
In the long minutes it took the well rehearsed crew to fit all the passengers, decompression had already taken its toll. Most used the last of their strength to bat away life-saving oxygen before passing out. Those more lucid grasped gratefully at the masks as the crew fought gravity to reach them.
Sat in the crew seat, Katie heard a terrified voice on the intercom.
“I’ve lost control of her, it’s like she’s being sucked towards the ocean, the instruments are going crazy, we’ve dropped off the map…”
The voice next to her tailed off, only to boom out of the intercom, barely audible over the scream of air and engine.
“We are going down, water landing, stay in your seat with your mask secured, we are going to make this”
Only the crew were still conscious to hear the message, frantically tumbling down the plane towards their seats.
Their portable masks weren’t much better than the passengers, training and determination was all that had brought them through. They struggled to strap themselves in, half collapsing into their seats as they switched to the main oxygen supply. Angela still blacked out, the building deprivation hitting her despite the relief.
Katie reached over, her small handing squeezing Angela’s limp fingers. The bone shaking roar of air intensified in those final seconds.
The crash of metal into water boomed through the plane, the impact sending Katie jolting against the belt as the plane ploughed into the ocean. In that moment, every part of her shook from the force of it, her body bruising with the pressure of the strap. She vomited a sticky mixture of travel sweets from the crush.
The grind to a halt seemed sudden to her, although the plane had skimmed the water, losing velocity. She felt a weak tremble pass through her as relief coursed in her veins.
The crew recovered in minutes, the oxygen pumping through their blood, restoring them. Angela jumped in her seat as she came to, shock raging through her. It took a few moments for her mind to process the lack of motion, moments more for her eyes to adjust to the blue ocean visible through the windows. Smoking was still curling from the left engine.
The crew had rehearsed the next act with tireless precision. Opening the door would trigger the emergency slide, once they removed the back-up masks from the passengers, they should wake up within about fifteen minutes, a bit disorientated, but alive. Without resistance, removing the masks was a quick and easy task.
Moments later, the crew were preparing to descend the emergency slide and inflate the life boats. Angela looked at Katie, her small face streaked with panic jerking Angela from the automatic state she had entered.
Dropped the bundle that would become a life raft, she knelt before the child, hugging her without hesitation.
“Are you ok?” she asked, looked the girl over, taking in the spattering of sugary sick.
She reached for a tissue, despite the pressing need to inflate the rafts, she wiped the girls cheek clean. Katie didn’t reply, instead lifting her eyes to meet Angela’s.
“Hey it’s ok,” Angela murmured, hugging the girl again she asked, “Are you hurt?”
The little girl clutched her stomach, nodding. Angela lifted Katie’s arms out of the way, before tentatively raising her shirt. There was a black band of bruise beginning to show from the belt, but the skin wasn’t broken, and although it would hurt, there were no signs of internal injury.
“Can you get up?” Angela asked,
Katie nodded again, and Angela unclipped the belt. The little girl rose to her feet, tentatively at first, but standing drove the weakness out of her legs. She managed a weak smile. Angela was distracted by a hand on her shoulder.
“There was no answer from the cockpit, I put the code in, Angela their…” the woman tailed off in a sob, gulping back tears as she tried to continue, “Gary and Sue, the window had broken, they…”
Angela swallowed, “So we’re on our own then?”
The woman nodded. Angela turned to Katie, bending her knees as she started to speak,
“Do you think you are still up to being my assistant?” Angela asked.
A brave look of determination took hold of the small face as Katie nodded. Angela retrieved the life raft, passing it to the other woman.
“June, I will be there in a sec,” she said, turning back to Katie,
“See this diagram,” Angela began, pointing to a laminated sheet, “This is where all the life rafts are, will you go round and make sure we got them all?”
Katie nodded, her pallid face didn’t register the task, but she walked down the aisle with a calm sense of purpose. Angela returned to the crew,
“You ready?” June asked her.
It took two people to inflate the life rafts, there were eight of them, and they would need all four rafts for the packed commercial flight. Angela nodded as June handed her a life jacket.
They sat on the top of the emergency slide, letting go and slipping down the inflated plastic. The bumper at the bottom caught them, given them chance to unfold the rafts. The deflated raft could still hold the two people it took to inflate it. Katie appeared atop the slide,
“Angela, there are two more boats” she called out.
Angela glanced up, the raft in her hand,
“Great work, leave them up there. Now could you do one more thing for me?”
Katie nodded, reassured by helping,
“Can you count the passengers for me?”
Katie vanished from the doorway and Angela returned to the task at hand. June had dropped their raft into the water and was climbing in. Angela handed her the pumps, before clambering over the raised bumper of the slide and into the raft.
It was hard work inflating the life rafts, but the adrenaline surging through their veins pushed them on. The boats were rising from the black waves, tethered to the handles at the bottom of the slide. The yellow forms emerged from the dark swell, unfurling, spreading as they grew.
The choppy waves steadily slapped the firming edges of the rafts, splashing cold water into the craft. The sky was dark, overcast with thick broiling clouds, the wind was rising, tipping the crests in foamy white.
Katie returned to the door, shouting over the wind,
“ANGELA! ANGELA!” It took a few calls before Angela looked up from her exhausting task.
“There are 87 passengers,” she yelled,
“Thank you, can you sit in my seat next to the radio again?” Angela shouted back, her voice carried towards Katie in the billowing wind.
Katie ran back inside, clutching the edges of the seat. She could see the yellow hexagons bobbing through the windows, rising with each wave.
The air felt thick and heavy, a cold fear suddenly blossomed deep inside her.
A massive, dark shape cut through the water before a tousling raft. The whisked up foam atop the waves rippling with it’s slip stream.
Fear rose up her throat, filling her with it’s frozen grip. Katie sat, paralysed, as the rippled circled the little craft outside the window. She could hear the horrified screams of the crew, spotting the beast below the waters.
It happened in an instant.
Something black flashed out of the water, crashing on top on the raft, dragging it under the surface.
The crew, stripped of their boat, flailed in the open ocean, orange jackets barely keeping them above the swell. The things keeping them afloat hindered their ability to swim, Katie watched as they splashed feebly towards the slide. The darkness moving beneath them.
The two crew members were swallowed by the water in the same instant. The screams between parted lips bubbled in the water before the sound broke forth. The ocean filled their rushing void in a loud clap. They were gone.
The broken rope once securing their ship, floated, fraying in the surf.
The other boats had been pulled to the length of their tethers by the storm. The crew were desperately heaving on the ropes, drawing the ships towards the slide. Fear had stripped them of their training, instincts had taken over.
The remaining ships plopped below the water like dominoes. Dark shapes lurching out of the abyss, pulling them under. Katie did not notice the warm spread of urine down her legs as the blurry form flashed through the air. She could not tell if it was one or many, but she struggled to breath as she watched crew desperately shedding their life vests in their attempts to swim.
One by one, they were dragged down, water swallowing them as though they were never there. Katie watched through silent tears as the last blurry figure flung itself onto the slide, collapsing against the bumper in a soaking puddle of seawater.
She held her breathe, blinking away tears in time to see a clear, dark flash shoot out of the waves, whipping over the bumper. It wrapped around the squirming figure, dragged it over the cushioned rim of the slide. Eyes met hers as a man clung frantically to the handle of the slide, resisting for a split second before succumbing to the surf.
Katie sat wordlessly trembling in her soaked jeans as the other passengers began to come round, her knuckles white as she still gripped her seat. Her glazed look locked in contorted fear.
It seemed seconds to Katie before the passengers were rising from their seats, looking with confusion at the open doors, inflated slides, their eyes seeking crew they would never find.
A young man stepped towards the slide, life jacket in hand.
Her head turned suddenly, her eyes fixing on him,
“Don’t go near the water” she said, her steady voice emotionless as tears still raced down her cheeks.
Speed can be both a blessing and a curse, sometimes you end up with a great concept that just plays out for you, other times it doesn't come so readily. This is a bit of both, I wrote it last night, but on rereading it today, cut all the pre-crashing part and went straight from the action, as well as a few character development bits, I just wanted to have a bit more space for after the beast appears.
This is my entry to @mctiller 's Twenty Four Hour writing contest with the prompt 'A plane crashes, all passengers survive, but the crew is missing. No one remembers what happens except on terrified seven year old'
I would really recommend this contest, I enter every week now, and sometimes I look back and cringe that I posted it, other times I hit a real winner, but turned a story around so quickly is great practice, and there is nothing more valuable than that!
Check out all the entries under #twentyfourhourshortstory
Photo Credit which I have run a few filters over for a different tone